BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT 



GEO. H. EMERSON, D.D. 




THE BIBLE 



MODERN THOUGHT. 






GEORGE H. EMERSON, D.D. 

AUTHOR OF "DOCTRINE OF PROBATION EXAMINED," ETC. 




BOSTON: 
UNIVERSALIST PUBLISHING HOUSE. 

1890. 



\ 






«/ 



Copyright, 1889, 
By the Universalist Publishing House. 



mnibersttg ^ress: 
John Wilson and Son, Cambridge. 



PREFACE. 



* I ^HE contents of the pages that follow 
are in substance and largely in form a 
series of editorial articles which have appeared 
in " The Christian Leader." The original in- 
tention had in view a few brief statements 
touching certain fundamental matters in- 
volved in current Biblical criticism, — mat- 
ters in regard to which there seems to be 
some confusion of thought, which a popular 
and, as far as practicable, non-technical elu- 
cidation might do something towards remov- 
ing. The discussion reached an extent which 
far exceeded expectation. The several arti- 
cles, as they appeared week after week, re- 
ceived an unlooked for and very gratifying 
degree of approval, and this from sources that 



11 PREFACE. 

made it very assuring. The publication in 
book form is in part a response to what seems 
to be the suggestion of the judicious, and it is 
believed that, in this convenient form, the 
thoughts and explanations proffered may 
render a new and more extended service. 

In the shaping of the articles, as they ap- 
peared in their first issue, into the chapters 
of this book, a few, but very few, modifications 
have been found needful. The most notable 
change is the placing at the beginning what 
in the weekly paper was put at the end. 
There are a few transpositions of paragraphs, 
a few emendations, and occasional additions 
to the text, and also to the notes. 

The aim being to help the unlearned, terms 
are used in the following pages with more flexi- 
bility than the masters would approve. For 
one example, the " higher criticism " is made 
to include, not alone the process which de- 
termines the historic verity of the Biblical 
books, but also — a liberty which experts may 
censure — the accuracy of the text ; while 



PREFACE. iii 

" rationalism " is restricted to the process of 
determining what the books must contain as 
a condition of giving their teachings credence. 
The master-instructors would probably more 
rigidly limit the application of these words ; 
but it is believed that the text all through con- 
sistently adheres to the meaning as defined. 
Scholars writing for students very properly 
recognize distinctions in much detail that 
would be simply confusing to the general 
reader. This book is not meant for students. 
The realm of criticism as applied to the 
Bible does not, to any great extent, involve 
matters of sectarian difference. With the 
exception of a few paragraphs which discuss 
the Catholic claim of Papal Infallibility, and a 
few others which declare against the almost 
effete notion of Verbal Inspiration, there is 
hardly a line in the following pages that will 
disturb the prejudices or the prepossessions of 
any class of Christian believers. In fact, be- 
lievers of every name and sect, finding them- 
selves confronted by a common foe, are glad to 



iy PREFACE. 

waive for the contingency their differences of 
exegesis and also of inference, and battle to- 
gether in defence of that which is their com- 
mon umpire in matters of faith and conduct. 
The introduction of sectarian specialties in 
such a work as is here submitted would be as 
needless as it would be unwise. 

G. H. E. 

Boston, November, 1889. 



CONTENTS. 



PAGE 

INTRODUCTION 7 

CHAPTER 

I. Modern Thought Defined 16 

II. Criticism not Rationalism 22 

III. The Higher Criticism 28 

IV. The Extreme Claims of the Higher 

Criticism 34 

V. A Word of Caution 41 

VI. " Let it Come " 49 

VII. Relation of Reason to the Bible ... 60 

VIII. Not "Rome or Reason" 73 

IX. Reason both Bows and is Bowed to . . 86 

X. Concerning the Manuscripts 94 

XL Manuscripts. — Versions. — Quotations . 106 

XII. The " Confluent Lines." 113 

XIII. Concerning Infallibility 121 

XIV. In What Respect Infallible 129 

XV. The Question of Canonicity 139 

XVI. The Bible and Mankind 149 

INDEX 161 



THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 



INTRODUCTION. 

nPHE attempt to consider the Bible in the 
light of Modern Thought is a conces- 
sion that in some important sense there is an 
umpire to which our estimate of the book 
must submit. The question therefore natu- 
rally and justly arises : What is Modern 
Thought, and what is there pertaining to it 
that gives it a semblance of authority ? 

It must be clear on the statement, that no 
particular thought has commanding merit in 
the mere fact of modernness. What is now 
even stigmatized as old thought was once 
modern. There was a time when Jesuitism 
was modern, and if modernness gives author- 
ity, at that time Jesuitical thought not only 
was respected but merited respect. Gnosti- 
cism was modern in its day, yet the first 
chapter of John's Gospel was probably 



8 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 

intended to antagonize it. Pessimism is 
modern ; none the less, as the " gospel of 
despair " it has no claim to sit as umpire on 
any belief. Agnosticism is modern, but we 
do not therefore defer to it as having special 
claims. The notion of the Pope's infallibility 
is hardly a quarter of a century old, — it is 
" modern thought/' — but the fact is not sup- 
posed to weigh in its favor. 

It is in history that peculiar trends of 
belief, of sentiment, are characteristic of dif- 
ferent epochs. There is always a " spirit of 
the age," always a movement of public sen- 
timent, always a popular belief. This age 
trends, and very strongly, towards mate- 
rialism, secularism, spiritualism, " Christian 
science," rationalism in its technical mean- 
ing, and the notion of worship is perfunctory 
and formal as opposed to heart-worship. In- 
stead of taking our cue from current mental 
tendencies, it is often our duty to resist them. 
Some of the brightest intellects of the age are 
unmoral, — we do not say nor imply that they 
are immoral. In chairs of science the ethical 
spirit is weak ; often it is logically repudiated. 



INTRODUCTION. 9 

Of course the call to follow the trend of 
the cage, to get into the current of thought, 
to go with the " thinkers," must give some 
other reason than that of the bald fact that 
such is the demand of Modern Thought. 
Every pulpit, every religious journal, every 
teacher of ethics, is doing all that strength 
and opportunity permit, to stay the materi- 
alistic current, — of all kinds of thought just 
now the most vigorous and relentless. In 
fact, the advice to note the thought of the 
time and then resist it would, on the theory 
of probabilities, be the more likely to prove 
the wise direction. 

We have said that what we call Modern 
Thought, and to which w T e should in great 
measure defer, must have something to com- 
mend it other than the fact that it is modern. 
In what does its virtue and seeming authority 
consist ? 1 

1 Even those who most disown all connection with modern 
thought are sometimes found strongly reflecting its influence, 
— more frequently perhaps mistaking its real meaning. It 
seems to be the duty, therefore, of all intelligent persons to try 
in some degree to understand the impulses moving their time. 
Such and such opinions, it is often said, are " in the air." The 



10 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 

1. We should say that any intellectual 
movement that takes with it a broad consen- 
sus of opinion, that wins minds of very 
diverse antecedents, that brings to its cham- 
pionship persons who have acted therein 
from isolated convictions and impulses, — 
that the modernness that has these marks 
cannot fail to gain a just control. It is a fact 
that two astronomers of different nationali- 
ties, each ignorant of the work of the other, 
were simultaneous in reporting the existence 
of an hitherto unknown planet. This acci- 
dental and mutual confirmation made doubt 
of the revelation morally impossible. Now 
Modern Thought, as it relates to the Bible, has 
a great deal of this accidental certitude. 
Scholars of all creeds, with conflicting preju- 
dices, each having no knowledge of what 
others were doing, yet working on substan- 
tially the same material, have, in important 
regards, reached the same conclusions and 

thought of our own time, in its evolving phases or folds of va- 
ried hue, bathes us like an atmosphere. It wraps us round, 
penetrating often to our inmost sentiments. — Movements of 
Religious Thought in Britain, etc., John Tulloch, DD., LL.D., 
p. 3. 



INTRODUCTION. 11 

put forth the same postulates. There is so 
much of this in the literary department of 
Modern Thought that the authority is nearly 
autocratic. 

2. Further, a wide observation distin- 
guishes between a current of thought and 
an eddy. A general and comprehensive 
trend of the thinking and scholarly world 
will, in the nature of the case, incite counter- 
currents. Boatmen on the Maine rivers, even 
masters of quite large vessels, show no little 
skill in taking advantage of " side eddies." 
When the tide is ebbing, and so running 
strongly towards the sea, there will be, for 
short distances, owing to something peculiar 
in the contour of the coast, movements in the 
contrary direction, getting into which the 
very contrariness of the current is made to 
help. But woe to the skipper who mistakes 
an eddy for the current or the current for an 
eddy ! When exhorted to follow in the di- 
rection of Modern Thought, and a specifica- 
tion is made, the first thing to be determined 
is whether the specification is the broad cur- 
rent or merely a temporary and spasmodic 



12 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 

eddy. Broad minds, broad sympathies, and 
variety of attainments can easily determine 
what is the real Modern Thought and what 
the counter-irritant ; the narrow and the big- 
oted will not discern the vast difference. 

3. Specially in reference to Christianity, 
the particular Modern Thought which makes 
the basal evidence moral, and which places 
the Historic — in all its departments — in 
the secondary realm, rests on so broad a con- 
sensus of opinion, that the apologist who 
confronts it will forfeit the respect of the de- 
vout and scholarly world. This " modern- 
ness " is not the utterance of a coterie, or of 
a particular school. It is a very general 
" trend." Every section of the Protestant 
world — each often ignorant of what is going 
on in other sections — is sending forth testi- 
mony and adding to a movement which un- 
mistakably indicates a " current." It is a 
" modernness " which has not simply tolera- 
tion but favor in even the conservative schools 
of Orthodoxy, only less than that which it 
finds in the perhaps too forward schools of 
Liberalism. Surely it would be a somewhat 



INTRODUCTION. 13 

grotesque spectacle — that of a " liberal " 
arguing, and in the interest of conversatism, 
that which the leaders of conservatism have 
sloughed ! 

4. It cannot be " modernness " in thought 
to know and declare that Christianity does 
not rest upon the human mind and soul as the 
lowest tier of bricks in a building often rests 
upon a basis of granite ; to know and declare 
that it relates to the mind and the soul, in 
the sense of pervading them, being appro- 
priated by them, ingrained as part and parcel 
of them, — the same as skill upon a musical 
instrument is not an entity held by the mind 
and muscle of the expert, but a subtile qual- 
ity worked into mind and muscle. This is not 
Modern Thought, for Jesus anticipated it in 
his dialogue with doubting Thomas, and it is 
elaborated by Paul in the First Epistle to the 
Corinthians. The acceptance of the miracles 
as facts, and the acceptance of them as testi- 
mony, by no means include the process of 
working the essential principles of Chris- 
tianity into the appreciation and assimilation 
of sympathetic souls. There is no modern- 



14 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 

ness in the knowledge of this fact ; but it is 
Modern Thought that compels its general 
acceptance. 

5. Finally, while in what has just been af- 
firmed it is implied that the Bible must be 
held to the tests of what are called first truths, 
the fundamentals given in the intuitions of 
intellect and soul, it would be superficial to 
infer that, as related to the Bible, Modern 
Thought is constructive. It passes upon tes- 
timony that is. It weighs documents, com- 
pares them, declares how one supplements 
another; but it does not confound intellectual 
and spiritual first truths with a category of 
opinions determined in an a priori way. It 
does not force things into or out of the rec- 
ords for the bare reason that the things accord 
or do not accord with itself. This method is 
rationalistic, — of course not in the sense of 
the opposite of the irrational, for in this sense 
not to be a rationalist is to be a fool. To those 
who honestly so elect, the process is legiti- 
mate, for thought is free, but it must not be 
confounded with what is technically called 
Modern Thought. In fact, it is anything but 



INTRODUCTION. 15 

modern. It is as old as Celsus, of the second 
century. 

We rest our case — so far as authoritative- 
ness in Modern Thought is in question — 
with the five particulars here elucidated, not 
however in the presumption that the state- 
ment is complete, but in the hope and trust 
that it covers the subject sufficiently for our 
present ends, and gives in distinct outline the 
particular Modern Thought that forcibly bears 
upon the claims of the Bible. 



CHAPTER I. 

MODERN THOUGHT DEFINED. 

DT Modern Thought as specially and di- 
rectly related to the Bible, with the 
higher criticism as the method, is meant that 
general outcome of historic research and criti- 
cism, and of somewhat new and generally ac- 
cepted canons of historic verity, and of the 
quite modern application of psychological pos- 
tulates to every kind and form of human 
belief, which, with rare exceptions, Biblical 
specialists of every sectarian relationship now 
concede to be authoritative. 

The subject in itself is vast and comprehen- 
sive. No one mind has taken in the whole of 
it. It has many departments, and every de- 
partment gives scope for a specialist. The 
literature — that which has grown up in the 
past twenty years — makes a very large li- 
brary. One has but to look at the bibliog- 



MODERN" THOUGHT DEFINED. 17 

raphy which an occasional author appends 
to his treatise on a single phase of the great 
subject, to be assured that the most industri- 
ous student can do no more than refer to 
works for the consecutive reading of which a 
long life would be too short. For one exam- 
ple, Prof. E. C. Bissell, D. D., appends to his 
book on " The Pentateuch " a catalogue of 
authors on the one subject, which fills sixty- 
four pages, making a total of more than two 
thousand authors ! And every one of the 
many departments of Biblical study has been 
pursued by a full regiment of specialists. 
Whoever makes a serious attempt to master 
one department soon finds that he has time 
left for no more than a superficial nibbling at 
any other. 

In treating of the general theme the best 
furnished mind can promise no more than 
conclusions drawn from conclusions, and pos- 
sibly conclusions at even a third or fourth re- 
move. Nor is this at all peculiar to Biblical 
labors. The same holds of popular, even pro- 
found, writers upon geology, natural history, 
astronomy, and certainly of the history of our 



18 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 

race. In all things, even in regard to our 
annual almanac, we must trust not a little 
to the erudition, the fairness, the reliability, 
even the authority of our fellow-men. In all 
things — in the things of religion not a whit 
more than in the things of sense — we walk a 
hundred miles by faith where we walk one by 
sight. It is needless to add that within our 
narrow limits, and in a few short chapters, 
we can give hut a few out of the multi- 
tude of lines of thought, and these in terms 
quite general. Were our knowledge of the 
subject-matter a hundred-fold greater than 
it is, we could, under the conditions, do no 
more. 

It would, however, be very superficial to in- 
fer from the fact that comparatively little can 
be said and understood that no light is thrown 
upon the comparatively much which, in its 
profound er meanings, cannot be grasped. In 
the simplest of the physical sciences it will be 
found that, for the masses, for the untrained, 
the intelligible little carries, justifies confi- 
dence in, the unintelligible much. In astron- 
omy, for example, the prediction of an eclipse 



MODERN THOUGHT DEFINED. 19 

fulfilled to a second in time, and to the width 
of a line in bulk, carries what Sir John Her- 
schel calls the " elegant theories " of La- 
grange : " If the mass of every planet be 
multiplied by the square root of the major 
axis of its orbit, and the product by the square 
of the largest of its inclination to a fixed 
plane, the sum of all these products will be 
constantly the same under the influence of 
their mutual attraction." * How many of our 
readers know, or ever can know, what things 
Lagrange here says ? But does any one have 
a shadow of doubt that the astronomer states 
the truth ? The little we actually can know 
carries the much that is out of our ken. To 
justify our intelligence in giving assent to the 
theory, we are not compelled even to tell 
what it means. Even so, a few salient state- 
ments in regard to the Bible, easily under- 
stood and winning assent, justify confidence 
in hundreds of recondite and scholarly state- 
ments, which only experts can understand, 
and which only greater experts can make. 
And the fact that we have no conception of 

1 Outlines of Astronomy, sec 639. 



20 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 

the things stated does not forbid belief in the 
reliability of the statement. 

Were we to allege that we enter upon the 
great subject without any bias, we should be 
more likely to deceive ourselves than our read- 
ers. It may be doubte if anybody wholly 
escapes the effect of prepossession. We have 
been accustomed to regard Ealph Waldo 
Emerson as getting very near the ideal of a 
judicial temper ; yet it is not difficult to trace 
in his writings the modifying influence of 
Unitarian prepossessions. What has won us 
to Charles Darwin, far more than the cogency 
of his argumentation, is the singular candor 
which apparently gives as much accent to the 
facts that weigh against his theory as to those 
that apparently sustain it ; yet we doubt 
not that those who habitually associated with 
him discerned that even Darwin was human. 
At the outset we will say that, after something 
more and better than a hasty glance at our 
subject, we find our views of the Bible quite 
unlike the impression which in childhood and 
youth we got from Puritan divines. Yet we 
have seen no occasion to relax our belief that 



MODERN THOUGHT DEFINED. 21 

it " contains a revelation from God," and in a 
sense which differentiates it from other litera- 
tures ; and our belief that Jesus is the Christ, 
the Sent of the Father, is all the stronger and 
clearer after undergoing the tests of Mod- 
ern Thought. There are religious books, in- 
structive, uplifting, and helpful, but now as 
never in our earlier years the Bible seems to 
us distinctively The Book ; and this after try- 
ing to weigh the recent and cumulative tests 
put upon it. If this is " bias " we cannot 
help it, for we are not conscious of the fact. 
If it so seems to the reader, he is free to 
" scale down ''as he may think he sees occa- 
sion to; but we add the caution that he 
do not, in the act, exhibit the weakness he 
fancies he sees in us. 



CHAPTER II. 

CRITICISM NOT RATIONALISM. 

A MOST provoking characteristic of mod- 
ern emendations of the Bible is the 
ignorance or else recklessness which seems 
to confound the two wholly dissimilar things, 
criticism and rationalism. Results which are 
thought to come from the one are passed 
off as products of the other. We refuse to 
accept certain rationalistic dicta and forth- 
with we are set down as bigots who refuse to 
accept the outcome of scholarship ! In this 
we are not complaining of the real masters in 
either realm, but of their half-fledged imita- 
tors, not a few of whom know just enough to 
confuse untutored minds, but not enough to 
remove the difficulties they create. 

Let us here distinctly declare our position. 
We accept everything that comes as a verified result 
of criticism. We resent technical rationalism 



CKITICISM NOT KATIONALISM. 23 

as an interloper, — as the most audacious 
sample of egotism known to the age. The 
difference between criticism and rationalism 
is profound. It may be put into a formula, 
thus : Criticism aims to determine what the 
Bible is; rationalism has contempt for the 
actual Bible, and impudently aims to make it 
into what, in its judgment, a Bible ought to 
be. Criticism studies documents, parchments, 
historic veracity; rationalism produces all 
results from the particular individual's con- 
sciousness. But here we must take extreme 
pains in defining terms. 

The natural meaning of the word " ration- 
alism" unquestionably operates to commend 
it in even its technical meaning. But be- 
tween the natural and technical meanings 
the difference is as marked as it is between 
Orthodoxy denned as " sound doctrine," and 
Orthodoxy as a name for Calvinistic the- 
ology. Happily, Orthodoxy has practically 
parted with its early meaning, as soundness 
in belief, and now comes to the popular 
mind as only a Calvinistic interpretation or 
version of doctrine. Rationalism, considered 



24 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 

as a comprehensive word for the results 
reached by the human reason, — in which 
sense it is not to be confounded with what is 
called technical rationalism, — can move the 
dissent of no one capable of taking in the 
meaning of the words. That the Bible must 
vindicate itself to the reason of the believer 
is so obvious a truth that it has the force of 
a first principle. That it is wrong to lie and 
steal and to be wantonly cruel ; that two 
contradictions cannot both be truths ; that 
reason, as a comprehensive term for the dis- 
tinctive qualities of mankind, should assent 
to nothing that contradicts it, and for the 
sufficient reason that it is psychologically 
impossible that it shall assent to such a 
thing, — no one who knows what thinking is 
will presume to deny or doubt any of these 
propositions ; to do so would be mental 
stultification. 

Of course it is true that rationalists habit- 
ually assume these and kindred postulates. 
And so do all who are not rationalists. So 
do Calvinists, and Mohammedans, and boot- 
blacks, and chimney-sweeps. It is impossible 



CRITICISM NOT RATIONALISM. 25 

to make an intelligible proposition without 
presuming their truth. We can no more get 
away from them than from the conditions 
of time and space. There is no doubt that 
the technical rationalist, gets a good deal of 
popular effect by virtually assuming that he 
has a monopoly in the principles of reason, 
which are of necessity the common be- 
liefs of all intelligent persons. There is no 
doubt that he gets the particular effect that 
all who criticise technical rationalism do in 
the act antagonize the inevitable rationalism. 
But this is a matter of course. Scepticism 
has always started off with the postulate 
that men of faith are fools. 

In fact, what we call technical ration- 
alism is a modern name for a set of opinions 
no more to be confounded with the primitive 
postulates which are the birthright of every 
soul than are the pictures or the cartoons put 
upon canvas with the paint which the artist 
or caricaturist has made use of for the par- 
ticular end. Nothing can be Bible, nothing 
can be revelation, nothing can have evidence 
enough to make it respectable, which con- 



26 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 

flicts with the instincts of the human soul. 
But before ingeniously constructed opinions 
can have weight as opposed to Scripture, or 
to anything, it must be demonstrated that 
the opinions are true reflections of the soul's 
first beliefs and not grotesque contortions 
thereof. Technical rationalism would assure 
the King of Siam that the notion imported 
from the temperate zones that water will 
harden is a fiction to be dismissed without 
argument, — an invention which the experi- 
ence of every Siamese at once pronounces a 
lie. But if his Majesty would take a balloon 
ascension to the height of two or three miles 
with a flask of water in his pocket, he would 
discover that the technical rationalism was 
anything but a real one. The Bible does not 
live by the consent of any man's opinions, no 
matter how sonorous the name he gives to 
them. 

We wish in these reflections to be impar- 
tial as well as just. We have expressed in- 
dignation with the technical rationalist who 
parades the results of criticism as his achieve- 
ment. Perhaps we have not felt indignant, 



CRITICISM NOT RATIONALISM. 27 

but we have been grieved and embarrassed 
when those with whom we are in general 
agreement make a not less inexcusable 
blunder in the opposite direction. There 
are men who, in the interests of faith, call 
certain results of scholarly research by the 
name of rationalism ; they do this to give 
the new statement a bad repute. In fact, a 
class of Biblical champions do the cause more 
harm than do the enemies of Scripture. The 
question whether David wrote a single psalm 
is not at all a question of rationalism, — has 
no more to do with this than it has with 
alchemy. Eationalism does not raise the 
doubt, and the doubt is not suppressed by 
calling it rationalism. From first to last it 
is a question of the higher criticism. 

In fact, neither party is without fault in 
this matter. It is of supreme moment that in 
every instance and in every particular we call 
rationalism rationalism, and criticism criti- 
cism. The two are wholly dissimilar. From 
the one we indignantly recoil; to the other 
we go with eager, grateful hearts. 



CHAPTER III. 

THE HIGHER CRITICISM. 

\T 7E have said, and we renew the state- 
ment, that we accept every result of 
the higher criticism. We may add, — of 
course we do. In fact, we can have no op- 
tion. . To presume on the contrary would re- 
enact the famous inanity of holding to an 
opinion, " the facts to the contrary notwith- 
standing." Possibly, in some instances, it 
may come hard to do so, in that a long habit 
of belief is thereby disturbed. From mere 
force of custom we may go on reiterating the 
old form of words even after we have dis- 
covered that they have no rightful place in 
our beliefs. 

For one example, — we never repeat the 
Lord's Prayer without including the doxo- 
logy, " for thine is the kingdom, and the 
power, and the glory;" yet at this date 



THE HIGHER CRITICISM. 29 

every student has discovered that it is an in- 
terpolation or an accidental addition. Again, 
we never add the newly discovered word, 
" deliver us from the evil one, 1 ' yet, what- 
ever the meaning, the u one " is a part of the 
authentic petition. On every Lord's Day 
millions of people, on both sides of the water, 
repeat the prayer in their sanctuaries ; yet 
such is the force of habit, we doubt if a hun- 
dred, all told, make the modifications which 
the Revisers have authenticated. But in 
every instance of exegesis applied to the 
words of the prayer, the polemic would in- 
sist or concede that the doxology shall count 
for nothing and the " one " be added. To 
anybody refusing to do this we might look 
with sympathy, but we should think it a waste 
of time to dispute with him. 

Let us " start with clear ideas " and answer 
the question, What is the higher criticism ? 
We can give no better answer than this, 
for it is precise : The higher criticism aims 
to determine what the Bible is. As we have 
explained, rationalism undertakes to deter- 
mine what the Bible must be. When the 



30 THE BIBLE AND MODEKtf THOUGHT. 

pettifogger asked his client, a What kind of 
facts do you want ? " he gave, in the realm 
of law, an exact example of rationalism. 
When the counsel on the other side proceeded 
to show what the facts actually were, he gave 
an example of the higher criticism. What- 
ever criticism throws out of the volume as we 
have it, one thing it never presumes to do ; 
it never attempts to throw out any part of 
the real Bible. It throws out the doxology 
in the current form of the Lord's Prayer for 
the reason that it has found out that the 
doxology is no part of the real Testament ; 
Jesus did not utter, nor ask his followers to 
repeat, that form of words. 

Though we have implied the fact, it may 
be needful to state implicitly and in form, 
that the higher criticism does not in any way 
concern itself with the doctrinal meanings of 
Scripture, — it is not exegesis. Commenta- 
tors who give such diverse interpretations 
of Matt. xxv. 32-46 — the Parable of the 
Sheep and Goats — take it for granted that 
the passage was really spoken by Jesus, that 
it is veritable Scripture. But the higher 



THE HIGHER CRITICISM. 31 

criticism, paying no regard to the interpre- 
tation would argue the position which the 
commentators assume ; it would restrict 
itself wholly to the question whether it is 
Scripture, whether Jesus actually spoke it, 
whether it is an addition or the modifica- 
tion of a copyist, and so on. 

We recall an episode of an anti-slavery 
meeting held before the war, in which the 
newly enacted Fugitive Slave Law was under 
discussion, — rather, malediction. One of the 
orators, with more heart than head, recklessly 
affirmed, and to the great merriment of the 
assembly, that the clause in the Constitution 
which the wicked law proposed to make effec- 
tive was the forgery of plantation politicians, 
and by them foisted into the fundamental 
law ! Could he have proved the truth of his 
assertion by documentary evidence, it would 
have been exactly analogous to what we now 
call the higher criticism ; whereupon an hon- 
est Supreme Court would have ruled the 
clause out, and with it the barbarous statute 
based upon it. Unfortunately, he could only 
say in support of his allegation that the fram- 



32 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 

ers of the Constitution were patriots and the 
champions of liberty, and that men of that 
character never could have framed such a con- 
stitutional clause ! But this was exactly akin 
to what we now call rationalism ; no court 
would have wasted time thereupon. 

To give proof from documents, or from in- 
ference based upon them or the lack of them, 
that the passage which says that Jesus at the 
wedding feast converted water into wine is 
an interpolation or copyist's error, would be 
a case of higher criticism, to resist which 
would be the folly of bigotry. To deny the 
genuineness of the passage on the ground 
that Jesus, being the friend of all righteous- 
ness, could not have done such a thing w r ould 
be a sample of rationalism, for which the 
higher criticism would not be responsible ; 
and to call such an assumption a case of 
proper criticism might be the well-meaning 
utterance of an uninformed, untrained mind, 
or the knavish declaration of one who knows 
better than to get an effect by a false 
method. 

Were we writing for the help of the com- 



THE HIGHER CRITICISM. 33 

paratively few who have given somewhat of 
patient thought to the general subject, we 
might rest this part of our theme here. But 
we are making an attempt to help and inform 
the much larger class who, having little time 
or perhaps aptitude for the proper study of 
the theme, may thank us if we give " line 
upon line and precept upon precept. ,, And 
for all we are paving the way to make as im- 
pressive as our use of words will permit us to 
do, our full, hearty, even grateful assent to 
every verified result of the higher criticism ; 
not, keep in mind, to a real rationalism pos- 
ing as criticism, but to the genuine thing, — 
higher criticism thoughtfully and honestly 
so called. 



CHAPTER IV. 

THE EXTREME CLAIMS OF THE HIGHER 
CRITICISM. 

TN the period of a generation an army of 
scholars in America, England, France, 
Holland, and — by great numerical prepon- 
derance — Germany, has had for its objective 
point the recasting of the Bible by applying, 
or professing to apply, thereto certain canons 
of historic criticism. So far as these scholars 
have been true to their profession, there has 
been no attempt to make or unmake, to mod- 
ify, to weaken or to strengthen, the real 
Bible. To reiterate what we find ourselves 
often iterating, — in so far as they are loyal 
to what is now called the higher criticism, 
they have attempted solely, exclusively, sim- 
ply this : to find out what is the Bible. They 
take up the Bible as, too often covered with 
dust, they find it, gilt-edged and resting on 
parlor tables, and say : " There is much in 



EXTKEME CLAIMS OF HIGHER CRITICISM. 35 

that book — in the Bible as there collated — 
that has no right to be there ; there are mis- 
takes in the order. of the several books, mis- 
takes of commentators first written in the 
margin, which subsequent copyists acciden- 
tally or purposely put into the text; there 
are accidental and also wilful interpolations ; 
there are things in that particular edition of 
the Book that sectarians put there in order to 
get a seeming support for certain pet dog- 
mas ; there are instances in which the leaves 
of manuscripts got misplaced, — things that 
would have been congruous in their rightful 
place that are quite incongruous in the pres- 
ent popular compilation ; there are whole 
books and parts of books in that particular 
edition that have no rightful place in our 
Scriptures ; and there are passages, perhaps 
whole books, not there which have a right to 
be put therein ; and so on. 

Let us here say that readers who may be 
disposed to accompany us are forewarned 
that they will see much in reference to the 
higher criticism, the office of which is, in 
some detail, explained in the chapter im- 



36 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 

mediately preceding. In itself right and 
needful, many of its experts assure us that 
some viciously abuse it to the ends of scepti- 
cism and doubt. Two in particular are cen- 
sured as passing off under its name their own 
fancies and guesses, — A. Kuenen, LL. D., 
D.D., professor of theology at Leyden, and 
Julius Wellhausen, professor at Marbury ; 
Kuenen in particular is censured as being a 
theorist rather than a scholar. We will, there- 
fore, in attempting something in the way of 
particulars, select the extreme pretence, and 
note more especially the radical theories of 
the two authors named ; in doing which the 
reader is asked to remember that we pass no 
judgment upon the theories, for or against, 
but simply state what they are. 

1. The most radical and voluminous of the 
results which are claimed as the outcome of 
the higher criticism pertain to the Penta- 
teuch, and particularly to the promulgation 
of the Law. When those in middle life were 
children, it was a general, almost an unques- 
tioned belief, that the " five books of Moses " 
were literally the literary work of the great 



EXTREME CLAIMS OF HIGHER CRITICISM. 37 

Hebrew leader, — of course excepting the 
brief passage which narrates his own death. 
This belief made those books antedate every- 
thing after the Pentateuch as the books ap- 
pear in our present Bible, — Joshua, Judges, 
Kings, and Prophets. 

But the claim of certain scholars now is 
that the higher criticism has almost reversed 
this matter-of-course belief of thirty or forty 
years ago. Moses, it is now said, did not 
write any part of the Pentateuch. This — so 
the particular scholars aver — is a composite 
of many different and even diverse writings. 
Dr. Charles A. Briggs, professor of Hebrew 
in Union Theological Seminary, says : " The 
consensus of criticism is that it is an anony- 
mous writing made up of four principal ear- 
lier histories, which have been compacted 
together, and that the Mosaic material is con- 
fined to the original sources and the essential 
features of the legislation." 1 Deuteronomy is 

1 "Whither? A Theological Question for the Times," 
p. 85. Dr. Briggs does not admit that the statement in any- 
serious sense affects what he calls the " inspiration and author- 
ity " of the Pentateuch. 



38 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 

by some pronounced a forgery, and its author- 
ship is assigned to a period subsequent to the 
Babylonian Captivity. The ceremonial part 
of the Pentateuch is set down as a compara- 
tively late production ; and the Law part of it 
at a still later date, — by the Dutch Kuenen 
to the " post-Exilian period/' the period next 
after the return from Babylon ; by the Ger- 
man Wellhausen, who treats it as a Hebrew 
evolution, to the yet later period of the Per- 
sian supremacy ; by both to a period between 
five and six hundred years before the Chris- 
tian era. 

2. The most emotionally religious of all 
compositions, the " Psalms of David," it is 
now affirmed, pertain, for most part, to events 
and experiences of a much later date than the 
Davidic period ; and in the opinion of not a 
few, not one of the Psalms was written by the 
great King. It is argued that the Psalter cov- 
ers widely remote epochs in Israelitish history. 

3. It is at this date denied that either 
Matthew or Mark w T rote a Gospel ; that even 
on the supposition that we have in the canon 
the Gospel " according " to Matthew, the lit- 



EXTREME CLAIMS OF HIGHER CRITICISM. 39 

erary work belongs to a later date, the facts 
being preserved by tradition. With greater 
assurance we are told that John's Gospel is 
neither the work of John, nor is it a gather- 
ing up of things said by John, but belongs to 
the second century, — a few place it as late 
as the fourth century, — the literary com- 
poser being unknown. 1 

In the particulars we have given, the 
reader is confronted with " the worst of the 
situation," — if we may apply such a phrase 
to any possible result of criticism : we mean 
that it does not seem probable, even possible, 
that anything more revolutionary will be 
attempted. The physician who purposely 
estimates the disease at less than its real 
seriousness, in order to make the treatment 
less difficult, is not simply a quack, — he is 
an impostor, and any jury would convict him 
of the crime of wilful malpractice. We are 

1 It must be remembered that even a bald summary of ex- 
treme views — such as attempted in the text — cannot be made 
with precision, for there are several schools of the extremists. 
They all make the general statement that the Law and Cere- 
monial date long subsequent to Moses ; but whether before, 
during, or after the Captivity, they by no means agree. 



40 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 

proceeding upon the ground that the higher 
criticism has possibly made some difficulties 
in the way of Biblical credence. It would 
be the practising of an imposition on every 
confiding reader were we, in selecting the 
difficulties with which to deal, purposely to 
pick out those most easily disposed of, and 
hide from sight, and flinch from the discus- 
sion of, those which present the greater ob- 
stacles to conservative faith. 

Very many particulars pertaining to the 
relations of the Old Testament to the New 
— for examples, the Messianic thread that 
leads up to Christ; the historic allusions in, 
even the basal matter of, many of the 
Psalms ; the reliability of the evangelistic 
records — are profoundly affected if it shall 
appear that the three particulars we have 
outlined are the results not of rationalism 
but of genuine criticism. The most radical 
of iconoclasts will concede that, in giving 
samples of the new difficulties, we have gone 
to the bottom in our brief delineation of the 
Wellhausen evolution and the Kuenen theory 
of the Pentateuch and its incidentals. 



CHAPTER V. 

A WORD OF CAUTION. 

TT has been said of Butler's "Analogy" 
-*• that it may be a question whether it 
has not made more sceptics than it has 
converted to Christian belief! The reason 
given for this fear is the fact that an un- 
trained reader can easily get that great 
writer's meaning when he simply states the 
position taken by unbelievers ; but that a 
reader so poorly equipped may fail to get 
the meaning when the author proceeds to 
show that those positions are untenable. 
The language of negation carries its mean- 
ing on the surface ; the language of argu- 
ment, in the line of affirmation, is usually 
exacting, and to the untutored it may be 
obscure. We think it probable that a super- 
ficial reading of Butler may raise doubts ; 
while we are confident that an appreciative 



42 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 

study of that master thinker, will not only 
remove the doubt but make its return quite 
improbable. 

"We hold that every one whose vocation it 
is to instruct mankind in the things of morals 
and religion is bound to do something more 
than put his thoughts into the words that, 
rightly understood, properly convey his 
meaning. He is, in great degree, responsible 
for the impression he makes. If he address 
experts he may speak in technical terms. 
If he address people who, however intelli- 
gent, are not trained to the niceties of state- 
ment, he must speak in the language of 
those who listen to him. If he uses terms 
and illustrations which, while technically 
correct, must none the less mislead all not 
informed in regard to the technicalities, he 
is a deceiver ; if he so speaks foreseeing that 
his words will be mischievously perverted, he 
is a false teacher and merits the deepest cen- 
sure. We would have no such man on our 
list of friends, for his heart is bad. 

In the last chapter we gave three particu- 
lars of what, in the judgment of two noted 



A WORD OF CAUTION. 43 

Orientalists, are the outcomes of the higher 
criticism. We have been careful to state 
that we have selected them with a view to 
get " the worst of the situation." A scholar- 
ship that has placed the " Law of Moses " in 
the fifth or sixth century before Christ ; 
which aimed to revolutionize our early beliefs 
touching the most devout of all literatures ; 
which has set aside Matthew and Mark as 
authors, and which takes the generally ac- 
cepted elate and authorship from the Fourth 
Gospel, — may be presumed to have touched 
bottom. Were we writing for instructors and 
students, we should proceed with the question, 
What of it ? Conceding for the sake of the argu- 
ment that all these and kindred points are 
really forced upon us, what then ? And in 
reply we should give reasons for our trust 
that, despite the startling situation, there 
is, after all, no great occasion for being 
startled. 

Before, however, attempting the reflections 
which a candid recognition of the " new 
difficulties " calls for, and which it is the pur- 
pose of these pages to present, we deem it 



44 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 

not simply prudent — which it is — but need- 
ful and just to submit a few explanatory 
considerations in the way of caution. 

1. While the purpose now had in view 
requires that we proceed upon the supposition 
that the extreme views advanced in the 
name of the higher criticism are true, we 
have a very strong impression that well- 
meaning readers may, despite our warning, 
get confused. And we must do a little more 
than put up the notice, " Conceded only for 
the sake of the argument." We must ex- 
plain and "hedge." 

Bridges are built, not for seasons of 
drought, but for the freshets of March and 
April. Ships are constructed, not for gentle 
breezes and smooth seas, but for the possi- 
bilities of cyclones and engulfing waves. 
We reiterate, therefore, that we are simply 
taking into the account the situation of 
Biblical believers in case they are compelled 
to assent to the extreme conclusions of the 
Dutch and German critics. But while we 
proceed as if their conclusions were inevitable, 
we in literal fact make no concession what- 



A WORD OF CAUTION. 45 

ever ; we neither concede nor deny, — we 
simply suppose. 

2. While it does not comport with our 
present purpose to express or even hint any 
opinion of our own in regard to the alleged 
results of the higher criticism, it is, however, 
but proper and needful that we state most 
explicitly that scholars who have made the 
study a profession, and who rank very high 
in the estimation of their contemporaries, 
stoutly deny, confidently challenge, the ex- 
treme positions of which we have given 
salient examples. They affirm, and by elab- 
orate and detailed argumentation maintain, 
that the " results " which we have outlined 
are not the outcome of the higher criticism, 
but of rationalism ; and they are particularly 
emphatic in controverting the theories of 
Kuenen and the deductions of Wellhausen in 
reference to the Pentateuch. Edersheim pro- 
nounces the evolution theory of the Law and 
its assignment to the post-Exilian period, a 
creation of fancy, and says it is intrinsically 
absurd. Dr. Bissell regards Wellhausen as 
an ingenious inventor. The English Light- 



46 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 

foot is not less pronounced in his antagonism 
to the " results." Chancellor Howard Crosby, 
— whom we must distrust in view of the 
fact that he is of the school of plenary in- 
spiration, — in terms not exactly judicial, 
characterizes the Wellhausen theory as a 
" barefaced falsehood/' and he avers that 
" Kuenen, Grof, Reuss, Wellhausen and 
others," are working in the service of Satan ! 
The late Dr. Ezra Abbott made a scholarly 
endeavor to sustain the Fourth Gospel as the 
literary work of John, and the late Dr. James 
Freeman Clarke inclined to the theory of its 
genuineness, deeming the matter somewhat 
uncertain. 

Yet further, we must warn the reader not 
to infer from the refusal of eminent scholars 
to accept, as fairly determined, certain ex- 
treme results now insisted upon in the name 
of the higher criticism, that any great num- 
ber of scholars, of any sectarian name, pre- 
sume to deny everything that comes as a 
result of scholarly criticism. There may be 
exceptions to the rule, but they will be found 
exceptions of such a quality that they will 



A WOED OF CAUTION. 47 

confirm the rule, while the rule is that very 
great results have certainly been put out of 
the realm of thoughtful discussion — results 
of a genuine criticism applied to the Bible. 
Hardly any one at this date has the estimate 
of the Scriptures that was popular and practi- 
cally dominant in a former but not very re- 
mote generation. Not merely Andover, but 
Princeton, and yet more conservative Hart- 
ford concede that the Bible is not, in certain 
important particulars, what their teachers 
assumed it to be forty years ago. Prof. C. A. 
Briggs of Union College, nominally Orthodox, 
stirs the opposition of some of his brethren 
by making the confession that the theory of 
verbal inspiration has been swept away. 
Prof. G. T. Ladd, of Yale, also -Orthodox, 
distinguishes between the subject-matter of 
Scripture and the literary vehicle, and aban- 
dons many of the positions formerly held by 
his theological brethren. 

We should add that while Germany has 
been a fruitful source of revolutionary theo- 
ries touching the contents of Scripture, at the 
present date most of the German scholars are 



48 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 

conservative. Nearly all the students and 
at the outset disciples of the iconoclastic crit- 
ics have, by more extended research, been 
led to declare against their masters. Well- 
hausen has few sympathizers and many an- 
tagonists among his German contemporaries. 



CHAPTER VI. 



LET IT COME." 



T3 ETURNING to the question, — from 
J "^~ which with a view to emphasizing a 
caution it seemed expedient to digress, — 
on the supposition that the extreme claims 
of Dutch and German scholars shall be estab- 
lished, what then ? we may reply, what all 
along we have implied, Accept them, of course. 
What else can we do ? To fight against facts 
is to fight against our intelligence ; and to do 
this is to fight against God. In the exercise 
and application of our reason and our spiritual 
intuitions, we, as Christians, profess to build 
upon the Scriptures, Christ Jesus being the 
chief corner-stone. Our creed statement is 
that the Scriptures " contain a revelation from 
God." Does the fact — if it shall prove to 
be a fact — that the Law of Moses, as we 
have been taught to call it, was not formu- 



50 THE BIBLE AND MODERX THOUGHT. 

lated by the Hebrew, but took its present 
shape a hundred years after the return from 
Babylon, make any vital difference as to the 
essential contents of Scripture ? The tilings 
are still there ; in what regard is the nature 
of the things affected by a change of their 
chronology, or a change in the methods and 
circumstances of formulating them? The 
modification is wholly that of the envelope, 
not necessarily that of the contents. God is 
said to have promulgated the Law through 
Moses, speaking from Mt. Sinai. Suppose it 
shall be proved — not guessed, which is the 
rationalistic way, but proved, which is the 
way of the higher criticism — that so much 
is literature, a rhetorical form of noting the 
fact that God was with Moses in the particu- 
lar of making intelligible to him His will and 
purpose, leaving the matter of shaping the 
knowledge to a later and maturer experience, 
— is there any occasion for a panic ? If there 
is we fail to see in what important particular. 

The most that can be said in the way of 
dissent pertains wholly to a disturbance in 
our habits of belief ; and a disturbance of this 



"let it come." 51 

nature is always very painful. All this is felt 
when a Pagan becomes a Christian, when a 
Catholic becomes a Protestant, when a Bap- 
tist or a Presbyterian becomes a Universalist, 
but there is nothing in the essentials of the 
record that requires that it be dated B. c. 
1800, or that is injured by bringing it down 
to b. c. 600. There is a sense of violence in 
so radical a reconstruction of the letter, but 
the spirit is in no way affected by the " re- 
daction.'' True, we have learned to love the 
old Bible ; but if the extreme criticism is able 
to sustain itself, the old Bible is the one it 
finds for us ; what it disturbs is a later, and, 
so far, an inaccurate Bible. If the critics are 
not theorizing but are doing genuine work as 
scholars, we ought, despite the pain inciden- 
tal to the invasion of our mental habits, to 
give them our profoundest thanks ; they have, 
so far, found the real Bible. 

Again, suppose that it shall be established 
by a general concurrence of many scholarly 
minds that David did not write a single 
Psalm, and that most or even all of that 
matchless utterance of devotion pertains to 



52 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 

a subsequent epoch in the history of Israel ; 
is it essential to the validity of the sentiments 
which the psalms breathe, and to their quick- 
ening power as they touch the human heart, 
that they should have been written about a 
thousand years anterior to the Christian era, 
and that the man who wrote them should 
have been the same who took Mount Zion ? 
Again, it gives us pain to have our mental 
habits broken, but the quality of the " Psal- 
ter" is not dependent on the historic setting. 
No accurate change of the letter has any in- 
jurious effect upon the spirit. 

The case is, it must be conceded, a little 
more serious when it comes to the authorship 
of the Gospels. If the Gospel " according " 
to Matthew means a record actually written 
by one who heard and saw Jesus, the proba- 
bility of accuracy is greater than it would be 
if the meaning is that some other person 
wrote down what Matthew said; and the 
danger of inaccuracy is increased as the 
number of persons through whom Matthew's 
recollections were repeated enlarges. If it 
shall so appear, — if the higher criticism shall 



"LET IT COME." 53 

as its final word date the first writing of the 
Gospels at a period subsequent to that of the 
evangelists, — we must in candor concede that 
so far it creates new difficulties. But despite 
all, the new difficulties cannot prove very 
serious, for happily there are corrective 
agencies and contingencies of very great 
authority. 

Those who have been led to make even 
a superficial study of the methods by which 
any one of the Oriental histories is verified 
will, we think, concede that there is a special 
reliability in the New Testament records. 
At the first blush it may seem, startling to 
learn that of the Bible not a single author's 
manuscript survives. We have not a single 
word in the chirography of any of the Bibli- 
cal authors. But neither do we have a word 
in the hand-writing of Herodotus, Plato, De- 
mosthenes, Julius Caesar, Seneca, or any 
other of the Greek and Roman classics. But 
who doubts the substantial accuracy of the 
" History of the Peloponnesian War," or of 
the " Retreat of the Ten Thousand " ? 

Whoever reads the translations of Plato, or 



54 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 

of any of the ancient authors, discovers that 
in reference thereto there has been some- 
thing akin to the higher criticism. There 
are doubts in regard to an occasional word or 
phrase ; and there has been resort to the 
process called canons of historic accuracy, to 
correct the text. But no one has ever felt 
that the critics have disturbed the founda- 
tions of classical literature, or have given 
occasion to question its genuineness. We have 
copies of copies and yet farther copying, but 
that the original both as to matter and form 
is safely in our hands is never matter of 
intelligent doubt. Why not have at least 
equal confidence in the reliability of Matthew 
and Mark? No reason whatever can be 
given why we should distrust the accuracy 
of our New Testament that does not hold 
with equal force, we may say with greater 
force, of Plato's " Republic " and of Livy's 
" Rome." There is no occasion for a sub- 
stantial distrust in either case. For one con- 
spicuous example, it is with classical scholars 
a matter of course, a factor hardly within the 
realm of discussion, that all the manuscripts 



" LET IT COME. ,, 55 

of iEschylus are copies, with incidental vari- 
ations, of a single manuscript, and this dating 
not earlier than the tenth century. Suppose 
this could be said of the manuscripts of the 
Gospels or of the Epistles to the Corinthians ; 
would there have been this matter-of-course 
belief and confidence ? Yet why not in the 
case of the Corinthians as well as that of the 
Greek tragedies ? Echo answers, Why not ? 

In fact, had rationalists in the garb of 
critics done for Greek and Roman authors a 
tithe of what they have attempted in regard 
to the Gospel narratives and epistles, there 
would have been, ere this, a host stoutly de- 
nying that Alexander or Cicero ever lived 
save in the imaginations of the credulous! 1 

It is to be said that, even accepting as 
genuine scholarship the extreme views, we 
simply have very much of what with every 
commentator there is not a little. The Revi- 
sers of the Bible had quite as much difficulty 

1 In another connection there will be occasion to give some- 
thing in detail concerning the relative ages of the Biblical and 
classic manuscripts. It will appear that all the facts are im- 
mensely to the advantage of the Scriptures. 



56 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 

in finding out what the Bible is as in putting 
it into accurate English. Wellhausen, as a 
critic, travels exactly the same road that the 
Revisers travelled, only going considerably 
farther. He returns with exactly the same 
kind of a harvest, only the load is consider- 
ably bigger. If w r e can take the one per 
cent of the scholars who have given us the 
latest edition of Scripture and not feel that 
the essentials of the record are hurt in the 
least, w T hy need we hesitate to take the ten 
per cent of the Dutch and German redactors, 
and with equal confidence that no foundation 
stone has been disturbed, — provided, always 
remember, that these men are scholarly re- 
dactors and that they are not evolving from 
their own consciousness ? 

We dwell upon this point, for though it is 
not all-important, it is at least the greater 
half of the matter now in discussion. By the 
side of it all other questions fade, with the 
great exception, — that pertaining to the 
canon of Scripture, including the basis of its 
authority. Ere long we hope to consider 
this most vital matter. But as the victory at 



44 LET IT COME." 57 

Gettysburg presaged the surrender at Appo- 
mattox, so do " clear ideas " in regard to the 
nature of criticism, and our duty in accepting 
and welcoming all that scholars really prove 
in regard to the contents of Scripture, pre- 
pare the way for such a statement touching 
the distinctive place of the canonical Scrip- 
tures as may challenge the criticism of intel- 
ligent doubters. Therefore in patience ivait. 
Let the scholars do their best. Very likely 
every one will mistake in some regard, but 
what one does amiss another will correct. It 
is reasonably certain that in good time there 
will be that practical agreement among the 
learned and candid which, in all historic mat- 
ters, is practically authoritative. And what- 
ever the verified result, let all be prepared to 
accept it and be thankful. 

For this connection our final word is this : 
Touching the results of the higher criticism, 
we cannot at this stage of the investigation 
foresee precisely what they will prove ; they 
may go back to conservative standards ; they 
may go on to the point reached by Robert- 
son, Kuenen, and Wellhausen; they may go 



58 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 



even further. But whatever they shall unmis- 
takably prove, we counsel in regard to them 
what Patrick Henry counselled in regard to a 
very different issue : " Sir, let it come ; I re- 
peat it, sir, let it come!" 1 

1 The one point aimed at in the text is that the verified re- 
sults of true criticism are to be accepted, not in condescension, 
with a mental reservation, but in gratitude, — gratitude in that 
so far we have an accurate Bible in the place of an inaccurate 
one. It may contribute somewhat to this needful impression 
if the fact is given that not a few scholars of even conservative 
orthodoxy have given their assent to certain of the extreme 
conclusions or claims of critics. A notable and quite recent 
case in point is a contribution to the " Homiletic Monthly " for 
October, 1889, by J. H. W. Stuckenberg, D.D., of Berlin, 
Germany, in which, with comments of his own and citations 
from an article in the " Contemporary Review " for August by 
Professor T. K. Cheyne, D.D., Canon of Rochester, he says : 

" Already results have been attained in Old Testament cri- 
ticism which are recognized by the most conservative critics. 
These results should be accepted. ' They mean reform as an 
alternative to revolution.' The extreme views cannot be har- 
monized, but he [Prof. Cheyne] thinks a provisional compro- 
mise possible. ' Why should not a provisional compromise be 
entered into, in all suitable cases, between church teachers 
and Old Testament criticism on the basis of facts generally 
admitted by the experts ? ' The admitted facts he thinks are : 
that the Book of Daniel is not by Daniel, and that the second 
part, ' the book of visions,' was composed in the Maccabaean 
period ; that Ecclesiastes was written long after the age of 
Solomon, most probably in the last century of the Persian 



" LET IT COME." 59 

rule ; that Isaiah xl.-lxv. is not by Isaiah, and that its chief 
part, if not the whole, is to be explained as of Babylonian 
origin. Of the Hexateuch [The Pentateuch with Joshua] 
Professor Cheyne says that ' German critics of the orthodox 
as well as the liberal theological school are agreed in admit- 
ting that the Hexateuch is a composite work, and that it only 
arrived at its present form in the exilic and post-exilic periods, 
— that the legislation in particular was repeatedly adapted to 
the changing conditions of the national life.' Respecting 
Deuteronomy he thinks that the church teachers, if they are 
to act in concert, must say with Delitzsch, * that, though con- 
taining a Mosaic element of uncertain amount, this element, 
like every other in the book, has " passed through the subjec- 
tivity of the later writer," and that " Deuteronomy in all its 
parts is a work from a single smelting, and though possibly 
earlier than Isaiah's time, undoubtedly later even than Solo- 
mon's ; and further, that the great body of Jehovistic and 
proto-Elohistic narratives, though possibly not post-Solomonic 
is undoubtedly post-Mosaic." ' Those who imagine that the 
safety of the church consists in ignoring critical questions 
make a fatal mistake. Scepticism he pronounces ' a force 
which can only be met, on the historical ground, by complete 
readiness to accept and assimilate critical facts.' The true 
issue before us is this : Shall the Old Testament be an abiding 
possession of the educated laity, or shall it be given up ? " 



CHAPTER VII. 

RELATION OF REASON TO THE BIBLE. 

~^HE course of inquiry indicated by the 
cognomen, " higher criticism," per- 
tains, as we have labored to show, simply to 
the contents of Scripture, and not to the 
meaning of the contents, their value, or their 
authority. It simply answers the question, 
What is the Bible ? It is a specifically dis- 
tinct inquiry, which takes the Bible as criti- 
cism has found it, and proceeds to explain its 
meaning and use. It is to this quite dissimi- 
lar department of our topic that we now pur- 
pose to turn the attention of those who read 
what we have to offer. 

We pause, however, in making this depart- 
ure, to impress one important lesson in re- 
gard to the issues involved in the criticism 
which we have labored to define. And this 
lesson is simply a warning to the unlearned 






EELATION" OF KEASON TO THE BIBLE. 61 

and also to the average scholar, — in fact to 
all save the specialist. The warning is to 
this purport: The battle is by no means over. 
Considerable time must elapse before a vic- 
tory in either or any direction can be de- 
clared. In the past, real scholarship has 
triumphed over passion and prejudice. It 
assuredly will do so in the present Biblical 
controversy. Meantime it will be well for 
non-experts to read with a reserve of 
judgment. 

And surely it cannot be thought strange 
that believers who find their prepossessions 
rudely disturbed hesitate and demand much 
in the way of argument before subscribing to 
the new opinions, — even if at the last they 
must do so. The human mind cannot take 
off and put on convictions or opinions as the 
body can take off or put on garments. What 
it has grown into it must grow out of, — sup- 
posing there is occasion for radical changes of 
belief. To be " blown about by every wind 
of doctrine " would indicate a natural fickle- 
ness, even if it shall at last be found that the 
wind blows from the right quarter. We are 



62 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 

not to be " blown " in any direction. If the 
mind does the work of change it will be done 
slowly, cautiously, gradually. When we re- 
member that thirty years ago it was deemed 
by such periodicals as the " Westminster Re- 
view " a sign of dotage to dissent from the con- 
clusions reached by the German scholars of 
that day, and now reflect that the pupils and 
successors of those scholars, standing upon 
their shoulders, seeing things in their time 
beyond their ken, refuted by a greater 
learning the lessons they at first accepted as 
finally determined, — it will be seen that not 
only the unlearned reader, but even the aver- 
age scholar, will, if wise, wait until the " mas- 
ters " can hold their throne for at least two 
generations. 

We turn, however, to a different phase of 
our discussion, and shall try to explain the 
attitude of Modern Thought in reference to 
the value and authority of the Bible. 

We begin at the beginning by considering 
that which is at the base of the entire discus- 
sion, and we raise the question : What is the 
relation of reason to the Book ? 



EELATION" OF REASON TO THE BIBLE. 63 

No phase of the general discussion calls up 
more unwelcome memories. In reference to 
no other matter in the whole realm of human 
thought has there been so near an approach 
to idiocy, — to self-stultification. Some not 
now very old readily recall the time when it 
was, in theological circles, stupidly denied 
that reason had anything to do with religion. 
It was assumed that reason and the Bible 
were wider apart than the poles, — indeed, 
that no practical tie connected one with the 
other. About two generations ago Dr. 
Channing, preaching on occasion of the ordi- 
nation of Jared Sparks in Baltimore, devoted 
the whole sermon to proving that Chris- 
tianity is reasonable ! At that date no one 
smiled at such a gratuitous performance. On 
the contrary, the sermon had the flavor of 
novelty, and the orthodoxy of the day con- 
sidered it a heresy. A generation later or- 
thodoxy condescended to admit that reason 
might be heard. This strange inanity was 
an inheritance from a church that affected to 
speak by authority. And it may be con- 
fessed that in the early phase of the post-Re- 



64 THE BIBLE AXD MODERN THOUGHT. 

formation period, when it was customary to 
make a Scripture mosaic and call it theology, 
— in a period when the relations of human 
nature to human belief had not received at- 
tention ; when Scripture could be mangled 
into such an inanity as the " being wise above 
what is written " and pass for a genuine quo- 
tation, — that in such a period, more caba- 
listic than thoughtful, occasion was given for 
such an argument as the great Unitarian put 
forth ; but it must be taken as proof that 
mental progress is slow, thai at any date 
within the century the Baltimore sermon 
could meet a want. 

And we find that we must not Hatter our- 
selves that the particular inanity is wholly a 
thing of the past. In humiliation we are 
compelled to note the fact thai within very 
recent months a minister, having made the 
statement that reason underlies all our be- 
liefs, giving the final verdict in regard to the 
Bible itself, was congratulated by one party, 
and censured by another party, in that he 
had become a rationalist! Our criticism 
would be that he wasted time in affirming a 



RELATION OF REASON TO THE BIBLE. 65 

platitude, — in affirming a proposition which 
every mental act presupposes; in making a 
statement the opposite of which, in Hamil- 
tonian phrase, he could not even think. 

If it is rationalism to assert that reason is 
at the base of all convictions — if it is infi- 
delity to say this, then class us with the infi- 
dels. The eye was made before there was a 
telescope. Even Lick's monster glass does 
not displace the natural vision ; to the blind 
it is of no more value than a stone ; it is the 
eye's immense helper. A true Bible assists 
the reason ; it does not crush or fear reason. 
We want no Bible, no Gospel, no ecclesiasti- 
cism, no church that can stand only as the 
image of God within us is cast down. Woe 
to the churchman, the apologist, the theolo- 
gian, who gives thereto any other than the 
seal of final authority. We accept the Bible 
because we have been led to think that rea- 
son is under it, upholding it by its power. 
We will add that no man intelligent enough 
to apprehend the meaning of the word would 
dare to dispute our averment and then sub- 
mit to a cross examination. In this age such 



66 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 

a man would not rise to the dignity of being 
contemptible. 

The welfare of every cause has its chief 
peril in the house of its friends. When, by 
its own champions, a system of belief is put 
upon foundations which the unprejudiced 
cannot fail to see are unstable, the " cham- 
pions " become in the result the most effec- 
tive of assailants. The unprejudiced and 
thoughtful have good reason to exclaim, "It 
must be a weak faith that can have no better 
defence ; " and it is natural, even if not 
wholly excusable, to presume that a cause 
will get proper treatment at the hands of its 
earnest friends. 

The bad favor with which the Bible is at 
this date received by not a few, and often by 
thoughtful and candid people, is due, in no 
small degree, to the half-inane defences of 
the Book which make no small proportion of 
the bulk of so-called apologetics. When men 
are called upon to believe in Christianity — 
and hence in the book which gives us Chris- 
tianity — by a process of argumentation which 
calls upon them to abdicate their reason, 



RELATION OF REASON TO THE BIBLE. 67 

their humanity, and their common-sense, they 
indeed should distinguish between the things 
to be believed and the method by which men, 
with a zeal far exceeding their knowledge, 
would have them believe ; but, with those 
who do not reflect, the temptation will be 
strong to judge of doctrine by the quality of 
the proffered argument. Without doubt mil- 
lions of people have been driven into hostility 
to the Bible by the strong feeling that there 
was no alternative if they would retain an in- 
telligent self-respect. Voltaire was not made 
an infidel by a study of the Bible itself, but 
by the presumption, not unnatural in his age, 
that the Romish mummery accurately repre- 
sented the Bible. It was the priesthood, and 
not the evangelists and apostles, that led him 
into scepticism. To-day, the most popular of 
the platform champions of unbelief is, by 
the informed, seen, in not a small proportion 
of his diatribes, to be fighting a man of straw. 
Not a few of the " points " with which he 
makes the unskilful laugh have long passed 
as good coin on the counters of even the New 
Orthodoxy. 



68 THE BIBLE iND MODERN THOUGHT. 

In the chapter immediately preceding, we 
called attention to the practice that pre- 
vailed in a former but not remote generation, 
of putting reason and the Bible into a rela- 
tion of antagonism, — the assumption being 
that it was so much the worse for reason ; the 
real effect on thoughtful people being the 
exact opposite, — so much the worse for the 
Book. It would seem to be enough to call 
attention to the folly and briefly characterize 
it. Unfortunately there is, even in this wiser 
age, an inheritance of that cabalistic past. 
We half suspect that some of our readers 
pause, with possibly something of a shiver, 
when we, in the clearest and most emphatic 
terms at our command, affirm, and re-affirm, 
that for man the final court of appeal is rea- 
son, and hence that the Bible itself will stand 
or fall exactly as that umpire shall decree. 
Yet had we more than the Platonic faculty 
for statement, and more than the Demos- 
thenic power of persuasion, we would use 
our best gifts to iterate and re-iterate that 
affirmation. 

We state our position with some warmth 



RELATION OF REASON TO THE BIBLE. 69 

in that we have suffered in our allegiance to 
the proposition we here lay down. Though 
it happened, often happened, years ago,— 
but not very many years ago, — we cannot, 
even now, suppress the rising of some indig- 
nation as we recall how well-meaning seniors 
have brought our own attempts at reasoning 
to a sudden stop by the cheap and shallow 
warning not to be wise above what is written. 
At such times and in such contingencies we 
were told by one class that reason is carnal ; 
by another class that the Bible is the only 
authority, — with a meaning to the word 
"only" that was virtually exclusive of the 
use of reason as having any part or lot in the 
matter. It is something of a satisfaction to 
know that a time has at last come when that 
sort of drivel is no longer heard — inform. 

We say " in form," for though the snake is 
" scotched " it is not killed. Hence, at the 
risk of reiterating what to our best-informed 
readers may seem but platitude, we must 
clear the ground for a proper continuation of 
our theme by something of an elucidation of 
that which we have as yet but baldly affirmed. 



70 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 

We begin with a notable ease in point. 
Somewhere in his writings Dr. Shedd, if we 
mistake not, imagines that he pays tribute to 
John Calvin in saying of him that no theolo- 
gian ever paid such simple deference to the 
Bible, building his creed thereupon with no 
admixture of elements from any other source. 
As a form of words the tribute has a gracious 
sound. It seems to imply that the great 
Genevan took the Word of God and not the 
word of man ; that he distinguished between 
a Divine revelation and man-made philoso- 
phy ; and that he placed the Divine infalhble 
assurance above and over the utterances of 
fallible human reason. In fact Dr. Shedd 
implies something quite other than this, as a 
simple analysis will show. 

When we say that Calvin builded a the- 
ology upon the Scriptures, precisely what do 
we say ? It is in the terms of the statement 
that he constructed something. Now when 
man constructs he uses tools. If he con- 
structs a bridge, a house, a piece of cloth, a 
shoe, he in every instance makes use of some 
implement. The derrick, the hammer and 



RELATION OF REASON TO THE BIBLE. 71 

saw, the spindle, the knife, awl and thread, 
— some one or more, according to the exi- 
gency of the particular work, is put to 
use. 

Calvin constructed a theology. Well, with 
what, — in the use of what implements ? 
Did he construct his theology with his hands ? 
Certainly not. With his feet ? Of course 
not. With his teeth? The ridiculousness 
of the question makes an answer needless. 
Then, we again ask, with what ? There can 
be but one answer : With his reason. Grant 
as we may that the Scriptures gave him the 
objective material, in the work of construc- 
tion Calvin relied upon his reason. Yet if 
Dr. Shedd can be supposed to mean what he 
says, he denies the self-evident fact. 

Now in what way did Calvin reason ? The 
answer is — it can be no other — by think- 
ing, comparing, inferring ; the gathering of 
facts, and deducing conclusions from them ; 
the weighing of evidence, sifting out soph- 
isms, arguing ; at least all of these processes 
are included in the working with reason. 
Dr. Shedd virtually tells us that building out 



72 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 

of Scripture, Calvin reasoned its facts and 
averments into a creed. He does not tell us 
by what sort of legerdemain the Reformer 
reasoned out his reason. Yet if he built a 
creed exclusively upon Scripture, — exclu- 
sively in the sense that reason being carnal 
would have been an interloper, — this incon- 
ceivable thing he must have done ! When 
the Apostle says, " I speak as unto wise 
men, judge ye what I say," he talks no such 
nonsense. 



CHAPTER VIII. 



NOT "HOME OR REASON." 



IV /TODERN Thought is by no means a 
^ fetish, nor is it a final mental estate, 

nor has it the grace of infallibility. Yet, as 
was sought to be explained in the intro- 
ductory chapter, it is presumably an advance 
upon the past. The notion that men have 
studied and thought to no definite purpose 
is not to be entertained. Every generation 
has at least the advantage of standing upon 
the shoulders of the preceding generation. 
Progress in the realm of ideas is not simply 
a duty, — it is a fact. 

As related to the Bible the influence of 
progressive ideas is very great. Every 
newly verified fact in regard to the nature of 
the human soul, is at once felt as a modi- 
fying agency in regard to the book which 
every stage of human progress entrenches 



74 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 

only the deeper in the appreciation and 
thoughtful veneration of mankind. What 
has been made reasonably certain in the 
world of scholarship, of psychology, of moral 
science, has made it impossible that the Bible 
shall be looked upon to-day as our parents 
and grandparents looked upon it. What a 
succeeding generation shall do in the same 
direction, we cannot conjecture. Doubtless 
there are at this date in the world's history, 
as there were in the Elizabethan age, more 
things in heaven and earth than philosophy 
has yet dreamed of. But we can only look 
at the things which now are; and to these 
we must look, and with something of authori- 
tative appeal, if we would think wisely of 
what yet remains the Book of books. 

Modern Thought compels us, first of all, to 
consider how the Bible came to be. That it 
contains a revelation from God is, we are 
confident, made all the more certain as the 
result of progressive wisdom. But we can 
no longer have the eyes and the ears of the 
thoughtful, unless we can be more specific 
in some statement of what this revelation is, 



NOT "ROME OR REASON." 75 

and also detail the process by which it comes 
in particular books rather than in others. 

Modern Thought no longer permits us to 
look upon the Scriptures as wholly and abso- 
lutely separated from other kinds of litera- 
ture. In some things it is new, — a thing by 
itself; in other things it is old, — a reprint of 
what was known before the books of the 
Bible were composed. It is needful that we 
not only distinguish between these two kinds 
of knowledge, but that we intelligently ap- 
prehend the difference. 

Modern Thought makes it imperative that 
we not only concede the fact, but that we 
act upon it, that the different parts of the 
Bible have unequal values. It may remain 
true that every part is best in its place. The 
Apostle could not be blind to the fact that 
the several members of the body have dif- 
ferent degrees of merit, — some are more 
" honorable " than others. The head has a 
higher office than the hand or the foot. Yet 
the head cannot take the place of the foot. 
Each part, the least honorable part, is best 
in its place. The genealogies, the Jewish 



76 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 

wars, the Mosaic legislation, the devout 
Psalms, the Sermon on the Mount, the dis- 
tinctively spiritual element of the Gospels 
and the Epistles, — for an example, the second 
chapter of First Corinthians, — each may be, 
each must be, of best service for the particular 
place and contingency ; but it would be the 
idolatry of the letter to class all as of the 
same intrinsic importance. Every part of a 
fruit-tree is best in its season, but the best 
season is that of the ripe fruitage. Modern 
Thought makes it imperative that we wit- 
tingly and formally apply this principle to 
the Bible. And finally, — that is, for this 
connection, — Modern Thought will expose 
ns to contempt if we fail to consider in the 
light of reason, in constant deference to rea- 
son, and in absolute submission to reason, all the 
great questions in regard to the origin, the 
canonicity, and the authority of the differ- 
ent books and the collection of books which 
make the Bible. 

The Roman Catholic Church has a royal 
road towards the solution of every question 
pertaining to the Scriptures, and in happy 



NOT "ROME OR REASON." 77 

contemplation of its lofty prerogatives, it 
pities, while it has contempt for, the poor 
Protestants. The notion of an authoritative 
book, in any sense of the word authoritative, 
in connection with the other notion that 
every one may and must be at liberty to 
determine what the contents and authority 
are, is to the Romish mind simply ridiculous. 
What would law be, what would law become, 
if every man were, as respects his public 
obligations, a law unto himself? In respect 
to legislative enactments every civilized 
people sees, and acts upon the sight, that 
there must be a court whose decree is final. 
The pretence that the Bible has any sort or 
degree of general authority utterly negatives 
— makes self-contradictory — the other Pro- 
testant pretence of the "right of private 
judgment ;" so the Romanist affirms. 

A few years ago, when rationalism was 
championed in a style somewhat unlike its 
present form, it was customary to flatter this 
conceit by conceding that it is either " Rome 
or Reason," — which meant that it could not 
be Reason and Protestantism. 



78 THE BIBLE AND MODERN" THOUGHT. 

The principle in all this was and is that 
nothing can be authoritative over more than 
one person, over two, a hundred, a thousand, 
unless a prerogative is lodged somewhere 
rightfully to coerce the two, the hundred, the 
thousand, — exactly as we have it in the 
administration of our civil statutes. The 
notion of an authoritative Bible takes with 
it as an indispensable correlative, an author- 
itative Church. When the Reformers threw off 
the latter, without knowing what they had 
done they, by the same act, threw off the 
former. Romanism, therefore, flatters itself 
that it, and only it, can be entitled to pro- 
claim such a book. When disputes arise as 
to the text, as to interpretations, as to the 
chronological order, as to the authorship and 
canonical verity of any particular manuscript, 
instead of referring it to a coterie of German 
scholars, a court, absolutely exempt from 
the possibility of error, is fully enrobed and 
equipped in the Vatican. In syllogistic form 
this is the boast of Romanism : — 

1. The Bible is infallible and authoritative. 

2. Only that which is itself infallible and 



NOT 



HOME OR REASON. 



79 



authoritative can affirm so much of the Bible ; 
for the stream cannot rise higher than the 
fountain. 

3. Protestantism has no such qualifications, 
by its own concession. 

4. Therefore, by elimination, the preroga- 
tive of infallible authority rests with the 
Catholic Church, it alone even pretending to 
possess it. 

It must be said that with the addition of 
a single " if " this claim of the Romanist is 
literally superb ; it exactly meets the want ; 
it is the solid bedrock of belief. We are, 
however, compelled to believe that it is all 
this " if " it is true ; it is in fact all this " if" 
it is any part of it ; it is absolutely solid " if " 
it is not absolutely shallow. 

We expect to show, we shall be disap- 
pointed if we meet with any difficulty in 
showing, that of all syllogistic bubbles this 
of Romanist blowing is the thinnest. Pricked 
it will vanish, leaving not so much as the 
semblance of argument behind. It is, if we 
mistake not, the most grotesque assumption 
that ever deceived a part of mankind. 



80 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 

The Catholic pretence, observe, is that it 
alone gives a guarantee of a reliable Bible, 
in that the Church alone even pretends to be 
the unerring instrumentality that is needful. 
Though this only needs to be stated to evoke 
the contempt of the Protestant mind, the 
situation calls for something more and other 
than contempt. In fact, the average Protes- 
tant mind carries not a little of the very 
thing which in terms it ridicules. When 
the Reformation of the sixteenth century 
fancied it had cast off the Romish supersti- 
tion it, in fact, retained very many of its 
worst features. The bulk of the " difficul- 
ties " which confront and embarrass the 
nominal Christianity of the present day, is 
but an inheritance from the Romish Babylon. 
The Lutheran school did not go far enough. 
It went so far as to throw off the papal su- 
premacy, but it retained of the papal system 
several things which can be justified only 
on the ground of the papal assumption. 
From the days of Luther till now Protestant 
Christianity has been handicapped, has been 
forced into an illogical position, by a certain 



NOT "ROME OR REASON." 81 

part of Romanism which it took with it in 
the act of separation. We must, therefore, 
if we would treat our full theme with intelli- 
gible justice, not only vent our contempt of 
the Eomish prerogative, but also justify our 
contempt with argumentation. 

The Catholic, as we have noted, makes 
against Protestantism the point that it does 
not even pretend to have — and certainly it 
does not have — an authoritative argument 
upon which to base its authoritative Scripture. 
The Protestant has no option but that of con- 
ceding that the point is conclusively taken. 
But how much better is the plight of the 
Catholic, — if the word " plight " is pertinent 
in such a connection ? The Catholic will say : 
" But we do not base the reliability of the 
Bible on argument at all. At the best, argu- 
ment is fallible. It is purely of human crea- 
tion. It cannot be greater than its creator. 
And ' to err is human ' must apply to man's 
reasoning not less than to his conduct. In the 
place of argument, therefore/ ' the Catholic 
will continue, " we put authority, reliable and 
final authority, — we put the dictum of the 

6 



82 THE BIBLE AXD MODERN THOUGHT. 

infallible Church." So far all goes smoothly 
and with invincible logic. But now conies the 
question, On what does the reliable Church rest? 
The Bible, we are told, does not rest on hu- 
man reasoning, which, however cogent, at 
least may mistake. It rests on an unerring 
decree. But who or what authenticates the 
decree ? Is this also unerring ? Back of this. 
or under this, is there infallibility number 
three ? If so, what holds up number three ? 
Has this also a hard-pan in a yet lower order 
of infallibility ? And how long can this thing 
go on ? Just inform us when we really touch 
the bottom round in this ladder of infallibili- 
ties, and then we must ask, What is under the 
loivest f Find, who can — imagine, who can — 
anything save argument, save a process of 
human reasoning, save a fallibility. 

In classic story, framed in ignorance of as- 
tronomic law, the question, " On what does 
the earth rest ? " got for answer, " On the 
back of an elephant." The inevitable ques- 
tion next in order, " But on what does the 
elephant stand ? " brought the response, " On 
the back of a tortoise." We are not told 



NOT "ROME OR REASON/' 83 

how far this questioning ran. But as in the 
nature of things there must have been a close 
to the series of questions and answers, in this 
end it could but have been apparent that the 
" difficulty " was only placed further off; in 
no particular was it destroyed or even les- 
sened. The Roman Catholic Church is, we 
will suppose, the " elephant " supporting the 
world of reliable Scripture. But we do not 
learn that its wisest champions have ever 
produced, or affected to produce, the equally 
firm " tortoise." When the Church talks to 
one of its own devotees, the bald assumption 
of authority may not be doubted, — at least, 
it will not be formally questioned. But 
when it talks to a Protestant, or to a heathen, 
or to any kind of an unbeliever, it will not 
have the audacity simply to assume its author- 
ity. It must at least attempt to support the 
claim with reasons. That is to say, it must 
— actually it will — present the much derided 
argumentation ! 

By virtual concession — concession in the 
condescension to argue the proposition — the 
Catholic has no better, no other basis than 



84 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 

has Protestantism. It is indeed one round 
lower in the ladder of supports, but it is the 
same thing, — reasoning ! Even the infallible 
decrees of the Vatican have, by the practical 
concession of all Catholics, can have, none 
other than the fallible basis. 

The old-time rationalistic boast, " Rome or 
Reason," is a fallacy. Its disjunctive is wholly 
misleading, for Rome itself is reason, — as we 
think, as Protestantism avers, very poor, mis- 
directed and misdirecting reason, yet that and 
necessarily that. In fact everything affirmed 
of the mind, or for the mind, is in the last 
appeal a thing of reason. It is the basal fact 
of the situation, presupposed in all stages of 
affirmation. If not the elephant, if not the 
tortoise, then that on which the tortoise 
stands, is — Argument. 

The truth is, all of man's mental estates 
must share in the limitations of his mental 
structure. Finite man cannot have an image 
of infinite reality. The metaphysical con- 
ception of the Infinite, as the French eclectics 
affirmed it, is not a conception, — it is simply 
a negation of the finite. It is a trust with 



NOT "ROME OR REASON." 85 

no corresponding intellectual image. Job was 
wiser than most modern theologians in that he 
knew his finiteness and accepted the logical 
sequence. "Canst thou by searching find 
out God ? Canst thou find out the Almighty 
to perfection? It is as high as heaven; 
what canst thou do ? deeper than hell ; what 
canst thou know?" Job felt — for it is a 
mental necessity to feel — that the infallible 
is; he also felt — and the fact is apparent on 
the statement — that the human mind cannot 
take it in. Romanism has ever, in this regard, 
attempted the impossible. The Reforma- 
tion inherited and reaffirmed it. Modern 
thought rules it out. 



CHAPTER IX. 

KEASON BOTH BOWS AND IS BOWED TO. 

/^^vUR theme grows upon us as we proceed 
^^ in its elucidation. We have promised 
— from the first it has been our thought — 
to make some statement of what modern 
thought makes imperative in regard to the 
making of the Bible ; what limitations it im- 
poses when we consider the question, How 
did we get the Bible ? what of our traditions 
it rules out when we consider the question 
of its canonicitj and special authority ? But 
as we proceed we find that the contemplated 
discussion of these very practical matters 
must take its place. It seems expedient that 
we explain, more in detail, the principles 
which are dominant, and which must be ap- 
plied in determining the construction and 
value of the Book. 



REASON BOTH BOWS AND IS BOWED TO. 87 

Meaning by reason, not simply the logical 
faculty, but the entire mentality of man, in- 
clusive of the ethical as well as the intellec- 
tual, — meaning, that is, the manhood of man, 
— we have iterated and reiterated the abso- 
lute supremacy of reason in the determining 
of all matters of knowledge and faith. We 
have conceded this of Protestantism ; we 
have, we think, put the fact beyond question 
that the Roman Catholic Church is, despite 
its sublime arrogance, in the same situation. 

But while we shall not and cannot modify 
this statement in the least particular, we as- 
sert — all along we have implied — that the 
Bible, in that it contains, or is presumed to 
contain, " a revelation from God," has its au- 
thority, makes its demands, has its supremacy. 
To those of our readers who are not trained 
to make careful distinctions — it would be a 
marvel if we did not have such — we are 
aware that we may seem to deal in contra- 
dictions. If Reason is supreme, of course the 
Bible must bow to it. On the other hand if, 
in any practicable and intelligible sense, the 
Bible has authority, — that is to say, has in 



88 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 

any practical sense a supremacy, — then in 
that sense reason must bow to the Bible. 
It will be asked : Is not the one proposition 
exclusive of the other ? Can reason both bow 
and be bowed to ? We answer at once that, 
when rightly apprehended, neither proposi- 
tion excludes the other. It is not only a 
thing conceivable, it is also a fact, and the 
fact has innumerable analogies in all depart- 
ments of research, that while the Bible must 
bow to reason, none the less if the Bible con- 
tains a revelation, reason must bow to it. 
The contradiction is verbal; definition and 
explanation will show that it is not real. 

Forty years ago, in his " Discourse of Re- 
ligion," Theodore Parker started the " Only 
truth is authority," — a statement in its im- 
mediate impression so obviously true that it 
became a proverb. It has, however, had the 
effect of blinding many, not to its opposite or 
contradictory, but to its correlative, " Testi- 
mony is authority." Definition and discrim- 
ination are therefore needful. 

We have recently taken in hand a little 
book, " A Vindication of the Mosaic Author- 



EEASON BOTH BOWS AND IS BOWED TO. 89 

ship of the Pentateuch," by Professor Charles 
Elliott, D.D., the general purport of which 
has our sympathy, much of his argumen- 
tation being pertinent and very thoughtful. 
But we come upon this, — exactly pertinent 
to the present stage of this discussion : — 

" If the Holy Scriptures contain a revelation 
from God, if their inspiration is fully estab- 
lished as fact, then reason, though it may be 
exercised in the examination of their divine 
origin, must bow to their authority T 

To this the answer is, Yes and No. In one 
sense of the words they conceal, in sauce that 
is palatable, the grain of virus that is germ- 
inal of the most venomous form of scepti- 
cism, the stuff on which Ingersolls feed and 
fatten. The malignant part of the virus is a 
metaphor, — a metaphor which to readers in 
a certain mental attitude conveys not only 
opposite but contradictory meanings. 

It is, we now repeat, an axiom that reason 
— using the word as a generic term for all 
the mental and spiritual gifts — is for each 
man the supreme and final arbiter. It may 
therefore be asked, What can a sane man 



90 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 

mean by the " bowing " of reason to any- 
thing ? The very phraseology offends a cer- 
tain class, putting them into a state that 
makes them impervious to all appeals. We 
know a minister who in reading one of Cow- 
per's noblest hymns, uniformly left out the 
couplet, — 

" Too weak thy secrets to discern, 
I lay my reason at thy throne." 

Yet as a matter of fact, every man, every 
clay of his life, does, in a quite intelligible 
sense of the phrase, " bow his reason " to au- 
thority. When a judge, having looked into 
the statutes and estimated the intent, gives a 
" ruling" he " bows his reason" to his own 
decree, — bows to the very thing reason has 
discovered and verified ! When a jury take 
the law from the judge their several reasons 
compel them to bow to that authority ; each 
individual reason defers to the superior wis- 
dom. When they find a verdict, in the 
doing of which reason has been their guide, 
they " bow " their reason to the conclusion. 

But, in a quite dissimilar use of the word, 
it is an inheritance of the past, it comes as a 



REASON BOTH BOWS AND IS BOWED TO. 91 

relic of the old theory of a verbal inspiration, 
to assume that revelation and reason may be 
in conflict, in which contingency reason must 
bow to its superior. In form and in defini- 
tion we may have thrown off this incubus, 
but enough of it sticks to confuse our judg- 
ment. We suspect that Dr. Elliott, in the 
passage quoted, has involved himself in such 
a sophism. If he is presuming a possible 
conflict between revelation and reason, why 
does he forget that if he is intelligent in his 
notion of revelation, it is his reason that has 
led him to its acceptance ? Put the Bible 
into the hands of an educated Japanese. 
What do you ask of him ? Certainly not to 
take your word for its verity. You inform 
him that it rests on a certain body of evi- 
dence, and then invite him to test its value 
by his reason. You expect him — why not 
expect the same of the traditional believer? 
— to make reason the final arbiter. But in 
case you succeed in convincing him that the 
evidences are conclusive, you then expect, 
have a right to demand, that his reason shall 
submit — shall "bow" to the testimony. 



92 THE BIBLE AXD M0DEK3" THOUGHT. 

In the spring of 1849 the Asiatic cholera 
broke out in the city of Dayton, Ohio, and in 
a very malignant form. A certain person at 
the time residing in that city, was suddenly 
attacked while upon the street. He was in- 
stantly in charge of a skilful physician, who 
was also a personal friend. The physician 
said to his patient : " I see what has got hold 
of you. Fortunately, your habits are tem- 
perate. Have no anxiety whatever. The 
remedy will be effectual." He filled a small 
tumbler with a liquid, of the nature of which 
the patient knew nothing. In a vein of pleas- 
antry quite natural to the genial doctor he 
said : " Were you in the condition you were 
in yesterday that would be the death of you. 
Take it and it will save your life." The 
patient, full of faith in the skill and experi- 
ence of his physician, drained the tumbler to 
the last drop. In three days he was com- 
pletely restored. 

Now for this particular contingency, what 
ivas authority to the sudden victim of the 
malignant epidemic ? Was that authority 
truth, — truth in the efficacy of the remedy ? 



KEAS0N BOTH BOWS AND IS BOWED TO. 93 

In one sense it was ; in a different sense it 
was not. Was that authority testimony, — 
testimony in the assurance of the man of 
skill ? In one sense it was ; in another sense 
it was not. 

This chapter has been written in vain for 
every reader who still needs that the applica- 
tion of this personal experience to the ques- 
tion under consideration shall be formally 
made. 



CHAPTER X. 

CONCERNING THE MANUSCRIPTS. 

TF the adults of the present day, those 
reared under nominally Biblical auspices, 
were to give their early impressions in regard 
to the origin of the Bible, there would, we 
think, be a general agreement to the effect 
that there was in its composition very little 
that is at all analogous to the making of 
other books. In commercial chambers the 
proprietor dictates a letter pertaining to the 
business of the house, which a specialist puts 
into the letters of the type-writer. It is not 
needful that the scribe shall apprehend the 
meaning of a single word. He hears the 
vocalization and accurately puts it into 
" black and white." It is not the scribe's 
letter in any sense ; he is simply the automa- 
ton that writes out or prints out the words 
that fall upon his ears. 



CONCERNING THE MANUSCRIPTS. 95 

In like manner God was supposed to have 
dictated the words of his Word to lawgiver, 
psalmist, prophet, and apostle, - — such at least 
was the " impression." Every word, every 
syllable of the two Testaments was, in some 
indistinct way, thought to have been divinely 
vocalized. . In such a passage as " And the 
Lord appeared unto him, and said, Go not 
down into Egypt," there may have been a 
glimmer of an impression that the clause 
" And the Lord appeared unto him and said " 
could not have been God's utterance in the 
direct sense in which the clause " Go not 
down into Egypt " was, for it was not possible 
to suppress wholly the working of the brain. 
But the " glimmer " did not attain to the 
strength of an " impression." And so there 
was a similar " glimmer " when we read that 
" God spake to his servant" and the servant 
made answer, "Here am I." Yet the im- 
pression remained, as history at least, that the 
very phraseology was a heavenly dictation ; 
as an historian God could of course dictate 
the words of the servant as well as his own 
words to which the servant replied. 



96 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 

As the clergy of two and three generations 
ago were educated men, and therefore must 
have known that in the " impression " w T hich 
we have described the people were misled, 
we must think that they were culpable in 
their habitual neglect frankly to state the 
facts. Worse than this, they read the Scrip- 
tures from the pulpit, and in their sermons 
made references to them, with a look and 
accent that strongly confirmed the inane 
impression. In fact, if an occasional hearer, 
constitutionally compelled to do a little think- 
ing, had the temerity to put a question to his 
minister in regard to the accuracy of the 
popular notion of the Scriptures, he was quite 
sure not to get an answer but a rebuke ; he 
was bordering on sacrilege in daring to be 
wise, in even wishing to be wise " above 
what is written " ! Probably the clergy of 
the days of our grandparents were, to an 
extent which they themselves could not sus- 
pect, the victims of the same cabalistic " im- 
pression." While as scholars they must have 
seen some of the real facts, " seeing they 
could not perceive.' ' 



CONCERNING THE MANUSCRIPTS. 97 

But whether culpable or simply unfortu- 
nate, whether themselves deceived in the 
things respecting which they deceived the 
people, they were deceivers. And the pen- 
alty is upon their children to the third gen- 
eration. For the time has come when the 
people are getting the knowledge which 
their spiritual guides withheld ; and a result 
is a shaking of confidence, with the reaction 
that is natural though not wise. The Bibli- 
cal " apologists " of to-day find themselves 
compelled to remove difficulties and resist 
prejudices which, in very large degree, 
would not have existed had the clergy of 
the olden time frankly told all they knew. 

A full answer to the question, What are 
the facts at this date unchallenged save 
by the incorrigible in loyalty to ignorant 
tradition ? would fill volumes, and very much 
of the details would not be intelligible to any 
save experts. It must answer our present 
purpose to give very general statements, 
and these in few words. 

First of all, — in another connection we 
had occasion to anticipate the fact, — we are 



98 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 

in respect to the Bible just where we are in 
reference to Plato, Demosthenes, Thucydides, 
Seneca, Cicero, and Tacitus, and every other 
of the Greek and Roman classics ; just where 
we are — strange to say — in reference to 
Shakspeare; we have not so much as a 
paragraph, a line, a word in the hand-writing 
or original manuscript of a single Biblical 
writer. In respect to the classics we have 
not a manuscript that antedates the tenth 
century. In regard to the New Testament 
we are vastly more fortunate, — we can go 
back to the fourth century ; but not beyond 
this. Every Biblical manuscript is a copy, 
probably the copy of a copy, and possibly 
this of a yet older copy, — yet a copy. 

Before the invention of types — before the 
art of printing — copying was at once a use- 
ful and a fine art. Men were trained to the 
vocation. They acquired in legibility a pre- 
cision and in ornamentation a skill that in 
this age seems marvellous. But of course 
they made mistakes. Occasionally a word 
or a line would be missed, — the omissions, 
w r ith others of a similar character, to be re- 






CONCERNING THE MANUSCRIPTS. 99 

peated by successive copyists. In some in- 
stances the zeal of a scribe in behalf of what 
he thought ought to be the meaning in a par- 
ticular passage, would tempt him — if there 
was any obscurity in the text the temptation 
became so much the stronger — to amend or 
even add. At first the amending might be 
put into the margin ; but it was quite sure, 
in succeeding transcriptions, to get into the 
text. Hence different copies of the Bible 
would have different mistakes. In a numerical 
estimate the different readings in the mass of 
manuscripts became very great. We give our 
opinion, but do not argue it in this connec- 
tion, that the number of mistakes of a serious 
nature is very small. 

We however state the case exactly as it is : 
we have no Biblical manuscript written be- 
fore A. d. 300 ; the oldest date is possibly a 
little later than this. The number of manu- 
scripts written in Greek is very great, — there 
are more than fifteen hundred still in exist- 
ence ; and they cover a long period, from 
A. D. 300 down to the invention of printing. 
Of the earliest copies — remember that every 



100 THE BIBLE AND MODERN" THOUGHT. 

existing manuscript is a copy — no one is 
wholly complete ; chapters, sections, verses 
are left out in all ; though happily what time 
and the destroyer have taken out of one is, 
as a rule, found in some one of the others. 
In many passages the readings differ. As we 
have explained, it has been the task, and also 
the immense service, of the higher criticism 
to deal with the difficulties of the situation 
and very largely to remove them. Indeed, 
this was no small part of the work of the Re- 
visers, — a work needful as introductory to 
the business of translating. 

Does any reader, to whom these statements 
may be new — very likely we have such — 
chill at our free concession ? Does it seem 
to such that the foundations are shaky ; 
that the historic foundations of faith have in 
them a suspicious proportion of sand ? In a 
preceding chapter we had occasion to remind 
all such that they do not take the same alarm, 
nor suggest the same doubt, in regard to the 
"Republic" of Plato; the "Philippics" of 
Demosthenes ; the " Orations " of Cicero ; the 
" Germanic Sketches" of Tacitus. 



CONCERNING THE MANUSCRIPTS. 101 

In regard to the dates of the copies of Bib- 
lical manuscripts as compared with those of 
the copies of the Greek and Roman authors, 
the contrast in favor of the Scriptures is so 
great as to justify, what in a preceding chap- 
ter was promised, a somewhat detailed state- 
ment; and this is the fitting connection 
Professor C. E. Stowe, dealing with this phase 
of our present subject, says : — 

"Of the manuscript copies of the Greek Testa- 
ment, from seven hundred to one thousand of all 
kinds have been examined already by critics, and 
of these at least fifty are more than one thousand 
years old, and some are known to be at least fif- 
teen hundred years old; while the oldest of the 
Greek classics scarcely reach the antiquity of nine 
hundred years, and of these the number is very 
small indeed, compared with those of the Greek 
Testament." 2 

Says Rev. John W. Haley : — 

" Notwithstanding its minute discrepancies and 
' various readings,' the text of the New Testament is 
better established than that of any other ancient 
book. No one of the so-called c classics,' not Homer 

1 Origin and History of Books of the Bible, p. 60. 



102 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 

nor Herodotus, compares favorably, in this respect, 
with the New Testament. . . . Among the Greek 
classical writers, Herodotus and Plato are of the 
first importance. The earliest manuscripts of He- 
rodotus extant are, one in the Imperial Library at 
Paris, ' executed in the twelfth century/ one in the 
Florentine Library, which Montfaucon assigns to 
the tenth century, and one in the library of Em- 
manuel College, Cambridge, England, which may 
possibly have been written in the ninth century. 
One of the earliest manuscripts of Plato is in the 
Bodleian Library at Oxford, and was executed not 
earlier than the ninth century." * 

Alleging that " so far as an authenticated 
and settled text is concerned, the classics are 
very far behind the New Testament/' Mr. 
Haley quotes from Tregelles : — 

" There is not such a mass of transmissional 
evidence in favor of any classical work. The exist- 
ing manuscripts of Herodotus and Thucydides are 
modern enough when compared with some of those 
of the New Testament." 

The same author, in close connection 
quotes from Dr. Bentley's reply to Collins in 

1 An Examination of the Alleged Discrepancies of the Bible, 
pp. 44, 45. 



CONCEKNLN'G THE MANUSCRIPTS. 103 

reference to the manuscript copies of Terence, 
the oldest and best of which, now in the Vat- 
ican Library, has " hundreds of errors : " — 

"I myself have collated several, and do affirm 
that I have seen twenty thousand various lections 
in that little author, not near so big as the New 
Testament ; and am morally sure that if half the 
number of manuscripts were collated for Terence 
with that niceness and minuteness which has been 
used in twice as many for the New Testament, the 
number of the variations would amount to above 
fifty thousand." 

Mr. Haley adds : " Yet Terence is one of 
the best preserved of the classic writers." 

We make further use of Mr. Haley's very 
instructive book by reproducing " the fitting 
words of Scrivener : " 1 

" As the New Testament far surpasses all other 
remains of antiquity in value and interest, so are 
the copies of it yet existing in manuscript, and 
dating from the fourth century of our era down- 
wards, far more numerous than those of the most 
celebrated writers of Greece or Rome. Such as 
have already been discovered and set down in cata- 
logues are hardly fewer than two thousand; and 
1 Criticism of New Testament, pp. 3, 4. 



104 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 

many more must still linger unknown in the 
monastic libraries of the East. On the other 
hand, manuscripts of the most illustrious classic 
poets and philosophers are far rarer and compar- 
atively modern. We have no complete copy of 
Homer himself prior to the thirteenth century, 
though some considerable fragments have been 
recently brought to light which may plausibly be 
assigned to the fifth century ; while more than one 
work of high and deserved repute has been pre- 
served to our times only in a single copy. Now 
the experience we gain from a critical examina- 
tion of the few classical manuscripts that survive 
should make us thankful for the quality and 
abundance of those of the New Testament." 

Our author reproduces a quotation from 
an article in the " North American Review," 
given by Professor Stowe, in which the writer 
says of Shakspeare, the text of which is less 
than two hundred years old, that it is — 
" far more uncertain and corrupt than that of the 
New Testament, now over eighteen centuries old, 
during nearly fifteen of which it existed only in 
manuscript. The industry of collators and commen- 
tators, indeed, has collected a formidable array of 
' various readings ' in the Greek text of the Scrip- 
tures, but the number of those which have any 



CONCERNING THE MANUSCRIPTS. 105 

good claim to be received, and which also se- 
riously affect the sense, is so small that they 
may almost be counted upon the fingers. With 
perhaps a dozen or twenty exceptions, the text 
of every verse in the New Testament may be said 
to be so far settled by the general consent of 
scholars that any dispute as to its meaning must 
relate rather to the interpretation of the words 
than to any doubts respecting the words them- 
selves. But in every one of Shakspeare's thirty- 
seven plays, there are probably a hundred readings 
still in dispute, a large proportion of which mate- 
rially affect the meaning of the passages in which 
they occur." 

The bearing of these citations on the value 
of the copies of Biblical manuscripts does not 
need to be pointed out. It must, however, 
be conceded that the facts as they pertain to 
the Scriptures make bad work with the 
theory of Verbal Inspiration, and with the 
Infallible Protection of the Romish Church. 



CHAPTER XL 

MANUSCRIPTS. — VERSIONS. — QUOTATION'S. 

\/\/E have said that the number of Greek 
manuscripts — copies within a period 
of something less than a thousand years — 
exceeds fifteen hundred. We specify Greek 
manuscripts. It may not be amiss to explain 
that the oldest Hebrew manuscript of the Old 
Testament does not date earlier than the 
tenth century. Happily, Hebrew scholars 
made a revision of the Old Testament about 
a thousand years ago, thus doing — we now 
quote J. Paterson Smyth — " for the Hebrew 
of the Old Testament what has recently been 
attempted for the Greek of the New. All 
the old manuscripts were collected together 
and compared for the purpose of a great 
revision, and thus at that date the Hebrew 
Old Testament was made as nearly correct as 
the best scholarship of the Jewish academies 



r MANUSCRIPTS. — QUOTATIONS. 107 

could make it, after which the older manu- 
scripts disappeared." x 

Of the large number of Greek manuscripts 
— all of which have been found more or less 
serviceable in the work of revision — three, 
on account of their antiquity, have almost 
supreme importance, and a brief word in 
regard to each is proffered. 

1. The Vatican. — So called because it 
is kept in the Vatican Library at Rome, the 
almost enviable possession of the Romish 
Church. The larger part of Genesis, a few 
of the Psalms, and all of the New Testament 
that succeeds the Hebrews are missing ; with 
these not extensive exceptions the manu- 
script is complete. Its exact date cannot be 
determined ; but by general agreement it 
belongs to the fourth century, probably the 
early part of it. It is the oldest of existing 
manuscripts. 

2. The Sinaitic. — So called because of its 
discovery in Saint Catherine's Convent near 
Mount Sinai. It was discovered by the great 
German " manuscript hunter," Dr. Tischen- 

1 How we Got our Bible, p. 30. 



108 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 

dorf, and with many incidents of romantic 
heroism. It is deposited in the St. Peters- 
burg Greek Church. It contains the bulk of 
the Old Testament, and the New Testament 
complete. After the " Vatican " it is the 
oldest of extant manuscripts. 

3. The Alexandrine — next in the order 
of time — contains nearly the whole of the 
Old Testament, and all of the New Testament 
with the exception of parts of Matthew, John, 
and the Corinthians. It is deposited in the 
British Museum. Its precise date is uncer- 
tain, but it comes as early as a. d. 450. 

The Bible, so far as the contents are con- 
cerned, rests mainly on these three manu- 
scripts ; though relatively less but positively 
very great support is derived from many 
other Greek copies. Nor are these in every 
particular identical in the matter. The three 
testimonies would otherwise be conclusive 
that we at least have the real Bible; so 
much would be secure whatever might be 
our opinions, or reasons for our opinions, as 
to its value. Unfortunately, there are a few 
serious differences, and many verbal differ- 



MANUSCRIPTS. — QUOTATIONS. 109 

ences which Biblical scholars do not regard 
as of vital importance. The difficulties 
thence arising would certainly weigh not a 
little against the reliability of the Book as 
we now have it, were they not overcome by 
strong testimonies coming from a different 
source. Fortunately, such strong testimonies 
we have. 

The reader will keep in mind the fact that 
there is such a thing as a "science of his- 
tory," — a metaphorical use of the word 
" science " to signify certain canons of historic 
verity which have been matured very much 
after the manner of scientists in dealing with 
physical phenomena. The so-called early 
records of history are not exactly, often not 
even approximately, " records " at all ; that 
is to say, scribes did not record events in 
their chronological sequence. In very few 
cases are there annals to which we may go 
as we do to a secretary's minutes. To make 
out a date, to distinguish and verify a par- 
ticular event, to fix a place in chronological 
relations, may — often does — demand an 
elaborate and complicated process. Experts 



110 THE BIBLE AXD MODERN THOUGHT. 

in dissimilar realms of research may have to 
be summoned. For a reliable example, the 
date of a disaster of a Greek armament in an 
attempt to conquer Syracuse has been deter- 
mined — at least confirmed — by an astronom- 
ical table of eclipses. The age of a temple 
in Thebes is reached by a deciphering of the 
hieroglyphics on its Avails; compared with 
the thickness of the mud above its base, — 
the Nile depositing about five inches in a 
century; compared again with some vague 
record in the priestly annals ; compared, yet 
again, with some correlated event in Assyrian 
or in Biblical history or both ; compared 
once more, it may be, with very conclusive 
philological criteria ; and so on. That is to 
say, that which is lacking in one kind of 
testimony is supplied by what comes from a 
very dissimilar source. The systematizing 
of these confluent lines of testimony is what 
is called the "science of history." 

Now in the work of determining the real 
Bible — not in this raising the question of 
its worth, this depending on a different and 
distinct line of argumentation — the " con- 



MANUSCRIPTS. — QUOTATIONS. Ill 

fluent lines" are an immense factor. In fact, 
the circumstantial testimony is often stronger 
than the positive. It is to examples under 
this head that our discussion now brings us. 

We are not restricted to the testimony of 
the three ancient manuscripts, nor to that 
of all of them. Very far from that. The 
concession has been willingly made — of 
course willingly, for it is inane to kick 
against facts — that we have no Biblical 
manuscript of earlier date than the first part 
of the fourth century. This, as we have 
noted, is but a copy, it may be the copy of 
a copy, and this again copied from an earlier 
copy. But if we have no first manuscript, 
ive do have translations of first manuscripts! 
The churches way back to the close of the 
Apostolic age, in Latin-speaking lands and 
in those of other tongues, had versions, which 
yet survive, of manuscripts much older than 
those which we have described. The manu- 
scripts of later date can therefore be compared 
with versions of manuscripts of a much earlier 
date. 

Yet again, the Church Fathers — from the 



112 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 

first Clement, who may have seen the Apostle 
Paul, way down to Augustine — make quota- 
tions from manuscripts at the times extant, some 
of which must go back to very near the days 
of the Apostles. Students who have made the 
Fathers a special study assure us that were 
all the manuscripts and all the translations 
wholly lost, no small part of the Scriptures 
— particularly of the New Testament — 
could be recovered from the writings of Ig- 
natius, Irenaeus, Clement of Alexandria, 
Origen, and Augustine. 

The significance of these collateral testi- 
monies makes them worthy of a more detailed 
statement. 



CHAPTER XII. 



THE " CONFLUENT LINES." 



T N these chapters we assume that no reader 
-*- will fancy that we are posing as original, 
— save of course as respects "the literary 
form ; " wherever we may get our facts we 
mean to express them in phraseology of 
our selecting. In historic matters no one is 
strictly original except the annalist or repor- 
ter getting the matter at first hand. In a 
sense less strict yet genuine, the scholars who 
deal directly with manuscripts, and such 
printed matter as records, official reports, 
and the material of historic canons, are orig- 
inal. Bunsen, Eawlinson, Grote, Niebuhr, 
and Mommsen are original. The name, how- 
ever, of original authors in any department 
of history, even of science, yes, of theology, 
is not legion. 



114 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 

The literature of the particular topic we 
now have under consideration is copious 
and varied, and it is growing with great 
rapidity. Of the few works which we have 
read, in some instances studied, and of the 
larger number to which we often refer, — 
detached parts of which we may say, in 
Baconian phrase, that we have " chewed," — 
it may be of service to some of our readers 
to name a few, particularly those which we 
have found of special service, while the 
enumeration will serve as credit given in 
"the lump." 

Pertinent articles in McClintock and 
Strong's " Cyclopaedia " are invaluable, 
though in disputed matters they are often 
unwarrantably conservative, while not a little 
of the matter would be written differently 
at this date. By way of reference, Beuss's 
" History of the Sacred Scriptures of the New 
Testament," translated by Edward L. Hough- 
ton, A. M., has exceptional value. We owe 
something to " The Chief End of Revelation,'' 
by Alexander Bolman Bruce, D. D., — the 
trend of which is anything but conservative. 



THE " CONFLUENT LINES." 115 

"The Old Testament in the Jewish Church," 
by W. Robertson Smith, M. A., has not the 
prestige it enjoyed eight years ago, but it is 
still of some service. " The Old and New 
Testaments in their Mutual Relations," by 
Frederic Gardner, D.D.; "A Companion to 
the Revised Old Testament," by Talbot W. 
Chambers ; and " Old Testament Revision," 
by Alexander Roberts, D. D., — each contri- 
butes valuable matter to the general study. 
Of course, and by great pre-eminence, and 
as a check upon some effete notions which 
handicap not a few conservative writers, 
we must mention Prebendary C. A. Row's 
" Christian Evidences Viewed in Relation to 
Modern Thought," and also, of course, the 
recent works of Professor G. T. Ladd, — 
"The Doctrine of Sacred Scripture," and 
also his "What is the Bible?"— a sort of 
directory to the larger work. For this con- 
nection, last, and least in quantity but by no 
means least in quality, we name J. Paterson 
Smyth's manual, " How we Got our Bible." 

According to the taste and particular pur- 
pose which may have led others to look into 



116 THE BIBLE AND MODEKN THOUGHT- 

the general theme, each might make out a 
list of authorities unlike that prepared by 
any other; but all would be sure to include 
the works of Row and Ladd. 

We have promised a few particulars in 
regard to the "confluent lines' ' of testimony 
or of information in regard to the contents 
of the real Scriptures. The oldest manu- 
script or copy dates, as we have seen, about 
a. d. 350. Of course the translations made 
at even that date must have been based upon 
manuscripts of an earlier period and now lost. 
There is a Syriac version thought to have 
been in use fifty years after the New Testa- 
ment was in manuscript. How much this 
may mean depends upon the date of the 
writing and collating the New Testament. 
The Syriac is very nearly the language of 
Judea in the days of Christ and the Apostles, 
— presumptive proof that the translation must 
greatly antedate any existing manuscript. 
The version of Ulphilas, mentioned by Gibbon, 
was made a. d. 350 ; of course the manu- 
script on which it was based is much earlier. 

But by far most important of all was 



THE " CONFLUENT LINES." 117 

the achievement of the great Jerome, — the 
Latin Vulgate, or the Bible in Latin, which 
for a thousand years was the Bible of West- 
ern Europe, and the one upon which all 
subsequent translations and revisions have 
been based. The New Testament part of it 
was completed A. d. 385 ; the Old, from the 
original Hebrew, a little later. On what 
manuscript — whether an original or a copy 
— it was based, we do not learn ; but on the 
statement it is clear that it could not have 
been very long subsequent to the Apostolic 
period. There are other versions of real but 
relatively of much less importance. 

It will be seen therefore that the means 
for purifying the manuscripts, even if not 
perfectly adapted to that end, are very great. 
If, for an example, the three oldest manu- 
scripts should differ in some one passage, 
and it should appear that a translation of one 
of an earlier period agrees with one of the 
three, the presumption in favor of the accu- 
racy of that particular one would be very 
great; and the presumption would be in- 
creased if other translations bore the same 



118 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 

testimony. In fact the late revisers, in 
striving to get at the exact text, derived 
very great help from the ancient versions. 

Not less helpful are the copious extracts 
from the Scriptures found, as we have said, 
in the writings of the early Christian Fathers. 
In candor it must be added that the value 
of this testimony is somewhat impaired by 
the fact that the Fathers usually quoted 
from memory, and were thus led into many 
mistakes. Theirs, it must be remembered, 
was an age of manuscripts. These were 
costly and rare. In this age of printing- 
presses we can have our Bible and dictionary 
on our tables for easy reference. But the 
Fathers had to go to the places where the 
precious manuscript was kept and guarded. 
Naturally they made their memories do great 
service. But no memory is unerring. But 
after " scaling down " the testimony, as we 
must, the fact remains that testimony it is, 
and of a very decisive character. 

One of the authors named above — J. Pat- 
erson Smyth — has collated several of these 
valuable citations. For one example, Barna- 



THE " CONFLUENT LINES.'' 119 

bas, who may have been the companion of 
Paul, — probably he was not, — and who 
must have lived very near the time of that 
Apostle, has these quotations in his epistle : 
" There be many called but few chosen ; " 
" Give to him that asketh thee ; " and " He 
came not to call the righteous but sinners to 
repentance." Certainly the part of the New 
Testament in which these passages are found 
must, at the time, have been in manuscript, 
or else in composition and held accurately 
in memory; 1 and their substantial accuracy 
is a clue to the correctness or incorrectness 
of the manuscripts of a. d. 300-450. Clem- 
ent, Bishop of Rome, makes, in an epistle, 
this citation : " He said, ' Be merciful that ye 
may obtain mercy ; forgive that it may be 
forgiven unto you. . . . With what measure 

1 It is not improbable that, in the period long preceding the 
art of printing, poems and even histories had literary form in 
the memories of their authors before they were written upon 
parchments. In the belief of classic scholars, Homer recited 
his Iliad, and Herodotus his History before the pen had put 
them in writing. If criticism shall show that the same is true 
of the Gospels and other Biblical records, the fact will not mil- 
itate against their genuineness. Even if not written they were 
phrased. The difference is substantially a mechanical one. 



120 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 

ye mete it shall be measured unto you.' " 
St. Ignatius, Bishop of Antioch, less than 
fifty years after the crucifixion, quotes this : 
" Be ye wise as serpents in all things, and 
harmless as a dove." Poly carp, a disciple 
of John, in an Epistle, " has," says J. Paterson 
Smyth, " nearly forty clear allusions to New 
Testament books." Justin Martyr, A. D. 150, 
quotes many passages from the Gospels. And 
these are but samples of many citations. 

The double value of these writings hardly 
needs to be explained ; they attest an early 
date for the manuscripts quoted from, and 
they are of great assistance in the correcting 
and perfecting of the text in the manuscripts 
that are extant. 

We have, then, in an endeavor to find out 
what the Bible is, these three witnesses : the 
manuscripts as far back as early in the fourth 
century; the versions of manuscripts of a 
much earlier date ; and the quotations from 
manuscripts as far back as Ignatius and Poly- 
carp, — back almost to the days of the Apos- 
tles. Out of the mouths of three witnesses, 
what is confirmed ? 



CHAPTER XIII. 

CONCERNING INFALLIBILITY. 

HPHE question What is the Bible? is one 
of very great importance. Of much 
greater importance is the question What is 
it good for ? When the dogma of Verbal In- 
spiration was dominant, the formula was, 
" The Bible is a revelation from God." Now 
that the Verbal Inspiration theory is virtually 
effete, the formula is, " The Bible contains a 
revelation from God." The new statement 
distinguishes between the revelation and its 
literary record ; between the substance and 
the envelope ; between the spirit and the 
letter. Christianity as a principle — as the 
truth of God's free and constant love to man, 
and this without condition of character or 
merit — always existed ; is as old as God and 
man. Christianity as inclusive of the prin- 
ciple, yet supplementing it with an historic 



122 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 

method, as not simply the fact of saving love 
but as a particular manifestation of the fact, 
dates with the advent of Jesus the Christ in 
Palestine. 

The value of the Bible is in its manifesta- 
tion, and hence in all the historic conditions 
of the manifestation. And this value is inclu- 
sive of another fact, to the purport that to 
the end of this manifestation the Bible may 
be relied upon ; it is authoritative. 

The immediate question therefore pertains 
to the authority of the Bible. Is the Bible 
in the particular of its authority — in refer- 
ence to the purpose upon which it speaks 
with authority — infallible ? To this question 
we answer, Yes, and No. This means that 
the answer must be accompanied with defi- 
nition. 

The word " infallibility " as applied to the 
Scriptures has been used very loosely, and 
often with an implied meaning that is for- 
ever negatived by the limits of the human 
mind. If the term is used to assert that 
there is a method whereby we may know 
not only that absolute truth is, but also 



CONCERNING INFALLIBILITY. 123 

whereby we may be absolutely sure when we 
have it, — as we have explained, this is the 
Roman Catholic notion, and Protestantism 
in some of its forms has inherited the no- 
tion, — we have this to say, " The pretence 
is simply an impossible one. Human nature 
has no room for it, and the Bible itself, so far 
from asserting it, declares its impossibility." 

The Rev. G. Frederick Wright, the present 
editor of the " Bibliotheca Sacra," a firm 
conservative and a champion of the Old Or- 
thodoxy in its conflict with the New, has seen 
and confessed the necessity of greatly re- 
stricting the word " infallibility,' ' — of defin- 
ing it by annexing limitations as applied to 
Scripture. He says : — 

" In ascribing infallibility to the Bible it is very 
desirable that we observe the same moderation and 
caution that were exercised by the divines who 
framed the Westminster Confession of Faith. It 
is not so generally known as it ought to be that 
that eminent body of theologians applied the word 
' infallible ' to the Scriptures only in an incidental 
manner, and in a limited sense. The Westminster 
divines emphasized the practical and religious char- 
acter of the revelation, together with the peculiar 



124 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 

exposure of such writings to misinterpretation. 
Their Confession well says that < all things in 
Scripture are not alike plain in themselves, nor 
alike clear unto all; yet those things which are 
necessary to be known, believed, and observed for 
salvation are so clearly propounded and opened in 
some place of Scripture or other that not only the 
learned, but the unlearned, in a due use of the or- 
dinary means, may attain unto a sufficient under- 
standing of them.' " 1 

In the above we are not now concerned 
with the particulars in reference to which 
Mr. Wright and the " Westminster Confes- 
sion" aver that the Bible is infallible; but 
we take a profound interest in their limita- 
tions and modifications in the use of the 
term, — in the fact that modern thought has 
compelled even conservative Orthodoxy to 
use it with a definition. And we must be 
understood to the same purport in quoting 
still further, and also in reference to an 
allusion to the opinions of the extremely 
conservative Dr. Hodge, as Mr. Wright 
continues : — 

1 Confession of Faith, chap. i. sec. 1. 



CONCERNING INFALLIBILITY. 125 

" The phrases which we have italicized indicate 
some of the respects in which infallibility may not 
be ascribed to the Bible. The utterances of the 
Bible are not infallible except as pertaining to 
things ' necessary to be known, believed, and ob- 
served for salvation/ Upon this point the language 
of Dr. Hodge is also sufficiently clear and emphatic. 
' They [the sacred writers] were not imbued with 
plenary knowledge. As to all matters of science, 
philosophy, and history they stood on the same 
level with their contemporaries. They were infal- 
lible only as teachers, and when acting as the 
spokesmen of God. Their inspiration no more made 
them astronomers than it made them agricultural- 
ists. Isaiah was infallible in his predictions, al- 
though he shared with his countrymen the views 
then prevalent as to the mechanism of the uni- 
verse. Paul could not err in anything he taught, 
although he could not recollect how many persons 
he had baptized in Corinth.' " 1 

It will, we think, be apparent on a simple 
statement that the limitations which this able 
writer specifies, and those which he credits 
to the Confession and to Dr. Hodge, go con- 
siderably further than he and they seem to 

1 Systematic Theology, vol. i. p. 165 : Studies in Science 
and Religion. 



126 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 

be aware of. When it is affirmed that some 
things in the Bible are infallible, and that 
other things are not, it is clear that a line 
of demarcation is to be drawn between the 
two classes of things. But who or what is 
to draw the line ; and can the line have an 
accuracy greater than the agent which draws 
it ? As shown in a former chapter, Komanism 
exults over this dilemma in the Protestant 
position, and with a flourish of trumpets 
boasts of its prerogative of infallibility in 
the Church, an infallibility alwaj^s at hand 
to "draw the line." We trust that it was 
shown in the same chapter that the trum- 
pets come to a sudden stop when the Ro- 
manist is confronted with the question, 
" Who or what gave you the prerogative 
of infallibility ? " 

The fact seems to be that Mr. Wright's 
well-meant definition, or the one which he 
endorses, is seriously defective. Its great 
value is in the testimony it gives that thought- 
ful Orthodoxy has discovered that a time has 
come when it is no longer prudent to play 
fast and loose with so mighty a word as that of 



CONCERNING INFALLIBILITY. 127 

■ 6 infallibility." But the definition itself needs 
defining ; and we suspect that the second act 
of defining would need a third ; and so on ad 
infinitum. That is to say, the principle of the 
definition is fallacious. 

We here add a bit of autobiography. In 
childhood and youth we were reared in the 
strictest deference to the letter of Scripture ; 
were taught to read it with no discrimination 
as to selection ; and were led to assume that 
for all matters of belief and conduct we could 
go to it, not simply w r ith the confidence with 
which a carpenter goes to his rule and square, 
but in exactly the same way! In later years, 
having occasion to make a study of Romish 
argumentation or assumption, the absurdity 
of our inherited notion of infallibility flashed 
upon us so vividly that we can never return 
to it unless our mentality undergoes a recon- 
struction. To apply to it a phrase we often 
quote from Sir William Hamilton, we cannot 
" construe it to thought." 

But at this date we do believe in infallibil- 
ity. We find a necessity for this belief in 
our mental constitution. And we affirm it 



128 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 

in no fanciful play of words. We are con- 
fident that the definition is legitimate, — that 
the principle of it is God-given ; whereby we 
re-affirm our hereditary faith in infallibility, 
— even Biblical infallibility. 



CHAPTER XIV. 

m WHAT RESPECT INFALLIBLE. 

\ ^ 7 HEN we affirm belief in the infallibility 
of the Bible, with the reservation that 
we may give our definition of the term, we 
make the concession that the freedom of defi- 
nition must, in fairness, be used with great 
moderation and with deference to generally 
accepted usage. It is a common device to 
conciliate prejudice by giving assent to the 
technicalities of an opponent, while adroitly 
so twisting them as to make them convey 
meanings quite hostile to the meanings in 
the mind of the particular opponent. We 
once heard a pro-slavery politician say that 
he believed in freedom for the Southern 
black ; but in his definition he made that 
freedom consist in the " undisturbed exercise 
of his rights in his proper estate," adding that 
servitude, bondage to one of a more intelli- 

9 



130 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 

gent race, is tt^e natural estate of the negro ! 
In this the meaning of the salient word was 
not simply made elastic and so modified ; it 
was wholly set aside and a wholly different 
meaning put in its place. The act was 
fraudulent; it was lying in order to hedge 
a prejudice, — rather, to befog an instinctive 
conviction. 

Is there in the historic use of the word 
"infallibility," as applied to the Bible, that 
which restricts it to the meaning that the 
Bible in every word is void of error ? Dr. 
Howard Crosby has recently averred the 
" absolute inerrancy " of every statement 
within the lids of the Bible, and this is obvi- 
ously his notion of Biblical infallibility. If 
in this he is right, — that is to say, if he is 
true to the proper meaning of the term, — 
we have no alternative but to reject the 
word as we do the thing it means. But if 
the Kev. G. Frederick Wright, of the " Biblio- 
theca Sacra," the very conservative Dr. Charles 
Hodge, and the Westminster Confession may 
be accepted as authorities, the historic usage 
of the word is not so rigid and inelastic, and 



IN WHAT RESPECT INFALLIBLE. 131 

infallibility may be affirmed of the Bible with 
a definition which makes Biblical history, 
geography, and geology in no respect more au- 
thoritative than was the wisdom of the par- 
ticular age in regard to the same secular 
matters. This is high conservative testimony 
that the word is elastic, and that there is no 
wrench in its application when it is applied 
to the Bible with very great modifications. 
We are fully, firmly, warmly committed to 
the Bible as having a special authority, an 
authority that differentiates the Book from 
every other religious literature, as averring 
certain things of God, the soul, the divine 
life, with a certitude not simply greater in 
degree than, but different in kind from, any- 
thing in Plato, Seneca, or Fenelon. For 
this certitude, both great and also peculiar, 
we must have a technical word, and if Mr. 
Wright, Dr. Hodge, and the Westminster 
divines are legitimate authorities, we may 
find in the familiar word " infallibility," a 
technicality ready for our use. 

The truth is, and the fact has huge im- 
portance, that there are no words made on 



132 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 

purpose for spiritual uses. God, holiness, sin, 
virtue, do not in their primitive meanings 
so much as include an ethical, much less a 
spiritual significance. In the cosmic unfold- 
ing physical things antedate spiritual things, 
and words to express them were matured 
before there was a knowledge of things 
strictly ethical and spiritual. First were 
things natural or material, and words came 
to denote them; after that were things 
spiritual, and words did not come to denote 
them, but the physical terms were borrowed 
and put to a new use. Every ethical and spir- 
itual term was, at the outset, a metaphor. 

It is a part of the situation thus delineated 
that many ethical and spiritual things must be 
indicated by phrases rather than single terms. 
If such words as u certainty," " demonstra- 
tion," "knowledge," "reason," are made of 
cast iron, if they cannot be modified without 
being broken and destroyed, it becomes a 
contradiction in terms to speak of Practical 
certainty, Practical reason as less than Abso- 
lute reason, Moral demonstration as less than 
Logical demonstration. Yet whoever has 



IN WHAT EESPECT INFALLIBLE. 133 

got so much as a smattering of learning 
knows that the masters of thought, in dealing 
with rational, ethical, and spiritual things, 
habitually prefix the modifying and limiting 
adjective, and honor it with a capital letter. 

Now there are — despite a seeming verbal 
incongruity, as in an exact square (as if a 
square is a square when it is not "exact") 

— degrees of certitude, and yet what is 
properly called certitude in the lowest de- 
gree. The late Theodore Parker would have 
it that he had absolute knowledge of the 
being of God, and he was intolerant in his 
censure of Dr. Dewey, who frankly confessed 
that he could not deem his strong faith in the 
being of God as the equivalent of knowledge, 

— for example, such certainty as we have in 
regard to the mathematical axioms. The 
fundamental of religious faith, the being 
of God, is but a probability, — with relig- 
ious natures a probability so intense as to 
have the effect of mathematical certainty, 
yet a probability. With great candor, Prof. 
Borden P. Bowne, one of the ablest and the 
clearest of theistic writers, lays down the 



134 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 

proposition that theism goes no farther than 
this : the doctrine of a God best explains the 
phenomena of the universe, and is therefore 
practically certain. With regard to the 
mathematical axioms, even they are not ab- 
solutely certain ; the certainty of the mathe- 
matical faculty must be greater than the 
certainty of anything exterior to and depend- 
ent on the faculty. We know that we are, 
that we have and exercise faculty ; we know 
this with more of certainty than we know all 
else. Our faith in God, and conception of 
his character, are dependent on what we know 
of ourselves. The reader who will follow out 
the suggestions we have proffered must see 
that, in many ways and directions, even cer- 
tainty may have, must have, its limiting and 
modifying adjectives. Absolute certainty is 
rare ; the practical certainties are many and 
diverse. 

Now in regard to Christianity, in all the 
particulars in which it depends on the records, 
— that is, in regard to the Bible, and particu- 
larly the New Testament, — it would be folly 
to make the pretence of more than practical 



IN WHAT RESPECT INFALLIBLE. 135 

certainty. That which depends upon what 
was said and written eighteen hundred years 
ago, upon manuscripts which do not now 
exist, upon copies, and copies of copies, with 
all the incidental risks of accidental and per- 
haps intentional additions, subtractions, emen- 
dations, modifications, — why, the degree of 
certainty lessens at every stage of the his- 
toric proceeding. Bat, as we trust was shown 
in another connection, "confluent lines " 
of testimony come with very specific and 
very great help, — so much so that there re- 
mains, for all who rightly take the name of 
Christian, a practical certainty. 

Yet again, — and here we give the central 
proposition, — Christianity is not a word, a 
record, an act, though it indicates and carries 
many words, many records, many acts ; it is 
a certain person, and that person a life in 
itself; while it is a life in the believer's soul, 
it is Christ and Christ is it. For ages great 
sermons have been preached upon the words 
" I am the way, the truth, and the life." 
Correct interpretations have been given, and 
the " Word was made flesh " has come with 



136 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 

power to millions of human hearts. Never- 
theless scholarship has but just got hold of 
the real significance, the comprehensive sig- 
nificance, the authoritative significance, the 
element of infallibility in the significance, of that 
great affirmation. The being of God as our 
Father is the first of truths ; the Christ as 
the embodiment of his special revelation 
to mankind is the second in rank ; and this 
is not a part of Christianity, it is the whole of 
it ; it is a whole with a vast body of various 
particulars. 

We know well enough that we cannot 
speak for all, but we can speak for a vast 
multitude of every sect and name in nominal 
Christendom, and certainly speak for our- 
selves, when we say that the Bible, as leading 
up to Christ, as having in him its flower, per- 
fume, and fruit, is infallible in every sense in 
which this grossly and grotesquely abused 
word can have meaning. It is an infallibility 
resting not upon records, not upon spiritual 
instinct, not upon the testimony of God's 
spirit in man, not upon the consensus of opin- 
ion in a community of saints ; it is infallibility 



IN WHAT RESPECT INFALLIBLE. 137 

resting upon all of these, all in correlation, all 
as mutually reciprocal, all as ramifying and 
clasping, all as having in the Perfect Life 
unity and solidarity. 

The Mosaic cosmogony, the Mosaic astron- 
omy, the ancient topography and geography, 
the Biblical allegories and parables, — real 
fiction in form and in particulars that is 
real truth in the intent and service, — the 
annals of Jewish wars, the crude characters of 
patriarch, lawgiver, judge, and king, the out- 
bursts of prophets suggesting infinitely more 
than they said, and doubtless far more than 
they themselves suspected, — these are the lit- 
erary setting ; and the setting is ever in the 
style of the time and the place and the epoch 
in history. As secular matters they are on a 
par with the contemporary wisdom ; we are 
glad to know that a long time ago the West- 
minster divines were aware of the fact; it 
may seem a matter for regret that they did 
not, by greater explicitness, more deeply im- 
press their wisdom on their contemporaries 
and successors. But the " drift/' the purpose, 
the salvable and saving end, culminating in 



138 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 

the Perfect Man and the Anointed of God, — 
this is the Bible ; for us — we know we can 
add, for millions — this Bible and the real one 
is infallible, if such a word has any place in 
the world's literature. 



XV. 

THE QUESTION OF CAN ONI CITY. 

' | ^HE question of Biblical canonicity is a 
great synthesis in which a vast num- 
ber of particulars — and these of very dis- 
similar characters — combine, coalesce, and 
render mutual support and explanation. It 
is, in its fulness, a question upon which it is 
idle for any to enter unless their special at- 
tainments are exceptionally scholarly ; and to 
the casual reader, or to readers lacking a spe- 
cial preparation in the distinctions and tech- 
nicalities of the theme, the erudition involved 
is perplexing, often quite unintelligible. The 
literature of the subject considers the author- 
ship of each book in the total which as a unit 
we call the Bible ; considers the time when it 
was written, and its relation to what came be- 
fore and what after ; it generally assumes that 
the question of authorship involves that of 



140 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 

canonicity, yet not uniformly, — the great 
doubt whether the author of the Epistle to 
the Hebrews and the author of the Second of 
Peter have been identified does not operate 
wholly or necessarily to destroy their canon- 
ical character, for the reason that the internal 
quality almost forces the conclusion that they 
are genuine Scripture, despite their possible 
anonymous source ; it passes judgment upon 
the acts of Church councils and synods, which, 
at different times, have thereon given decrees, 
reconsidered, and finally presumed to give a 
last judgment touching the contents of the 
book ; it weighs the capital matter of internal 
testimony, — the line of demarcation which, 
for one example, unmistakably puts most of 
the Apocryphal books on the one side, and 
the Epistle to the Romans on the other side ; 
it traces the thread of unity which runs from 
the first verse of Genesis to the last verse of 
Revelation ; and so on in a host of particulars 
which only very erudite minds, and those of 
pre-eminent synthetical genius, can even hold, 
much less pursue. 

It is needless to add that were our quali- 



THE QUESTION OF CANONICITY. 141 

fications a hundred-fold greater than they 
are, no attempt to give even a general sketch 
of the canonical problem could be thought of 
in the limits now at our command. Fortu- 
nately, however, there are certain principles 
— like those of gravity, repulsion, and cohe- 
sion in the physical world — which may be 
understood, even though the vast body of 
particulars which they include and explain 
may be beyond the ken of all save the small 
body of specialists. To a few of these prin- 
ciples we may call attention, — referring the 
reader who seeks the details to the perti- 
nent works of the masters. 

1. First of all we note that, while popular 
assumption and particularly hostile criticism 
put into the question of canonicity many 
things not necessarily there, there is a pro- 
nounced agreement in this general belief, — 
of Jews in reference to the Old Testa- 
ment, and of Christians in reference to both 
Testaments, — that a something quite peculiar 
pertains to the several literary compositions, 
and also to the method whereby they were 
collected into a single volume. Those which 



142 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 

bear the mark of this peculiarity are said to 
be canonical ; those which lack that mark — 
if any such there are — would be adjudged 
to have got into the volume by mistake or 
accident. As examples in illustration, we 
may state that the Epistle to the Hebrews, 
the Second Epistle of Peter, that of Jude, and 
the Second and Third Epistles of John, and 
even that of James, have — some by one 
critic and some by another, and often many 
critics concur — been looked upon with great 
distrust, and not a few reverent scholars 
have pronounced them wholly without au- 
thority. On the other hand the genuineness 
of the Epistle to the Eomans, the two 
Epistles to the Corinthians, and that to the 
Galatians, are among the determined ; their 
genuineness, both as to their Pauline author- 
ship and their rightful place in the canon, 
goes, at this date, without challenge on the 
part of any reputable scholar. There is less 
of certainty, yet great certainty, in regard to 
Philemon, Ephesians, and Philippians. It 
thus appears — and the fact is no concession 
to the sceptic, for in historic fact it antedates 



THE QUESTION OF CANONICITY. 143 

scepticism — that canonicity is not a matter 
of absolute certainty ; that it has degrees of 
reliability ; and that while practically at an end, 
it has never been officially closed. If they 
can give good reason for doing so, scholars 
are still at liberty, at least with the consent 
of Protestantism, to take from or to put into 
the Bible, — the Book as we now have it. 

It is true, as we have intimated, that 
church councils have affected to decide what 
books are canonical; and so have later 
church councils amended and corrected for- 
mer decrees as to what has a rightful place 
within the same Book. In no case has the 
action been final, — final in the sense that an 
infallible decree has made it heretical and 
presumptuous to interfere with the collection 
of books which at any period has made the 
Bible. In fact, the action of church councils 
and synods has never had the arbitrary char- 
acter which Protestant prejudice has attrib- 
uted to it. It has never pretended literally 
to make or to determine the canon, it has 
rather recognized the canon as other agencies 
have determined it. In all this we are but 



144 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 

reiterating matters which with judicious Prot- 
estant scholars are simply commonplaces ; 
and in doing so we take out of the way 
men of straw at whom unlearned scepticism 
is perpetually thrusting its wooden blades. 
Protestantism in its very nature negatives 
the popular notion of Biblical canonicity. 

2. But has not the peculiar " something" 
got together the many books of the Bible 
and asserted a unity and an identity and 
cumulative purpose and authority, whereby 
the Bible is unlike other books, and has ail 
authority distinctively its own ? Certainly 
there is just such a " something ; " and hap- 
pily one of the latest philosophies or sciences 
— we hardly know under which of the cog- 
nomens to class it — has given us a term or 
phrase that exactly describes it. We are 
indebted to Charles Darwin for the particular 
term " natural selection ; " or we accept Mr. 
Herbert Spencer's more precise definition, 
" the survival of the fittest." Whether 
or not new species in the vegetable and ani- 
mal world have been evolved at all, or if 
evolved, whether by the law of Natural 



THE QUESTION OF CANONICITY. 145 

Selection, we undertake not to say ; this is 
matter for the particular specialist. But we 
can hardly conceive a more fitting term for 
that providential guidance under which books 
produced at wide intervals — altogether cov- 
ering thousands of years, books written by 
authors of very diverse natural gifts, each 
often having an end peculiar to himself — 
have by a common magnet been drawn to- 
gether ; books in which are marks disclosing 
a common quality and purpose. 

To those who cannot accept the Christian 
teaching of God's Spirit injecting itself into 
the affairs of men, revealing truths which the 
logical understanding cannot discover or even 
identify, and compelling various minds, in 
various ages, to execute his will, — very 
often doing this most effectively when they 
knew it not, — to all such our theory of can- 
onicity, as we in very bald terms disclose 
it, will seem no more than the vision of a 
dream, — the bauble of an inane fancy. But 
to those who in that Christian teaching see a 
reality more solid than marble, and who have 
but to see it in statement to give it exultant 

10 



146 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 

assent, our " theory " will seem no theory at 
all, but rather the obviousness of a first and 
self-evidencing truth. 1 

3. Modern Thought does not require that 
we settle a host of questions touching the 
contents of Scriptures, as a pre-requisite to 

1 From the time of Abraham, the dominant, though strug- 
gling, faith of the Hebrew people held, with constantly in- 
creasing clearness of perception and tenacity of grasp, to the 
conception of one God, — a God of righteousness, a God whose 
approval could be won only by righteous living, a God gradu- 
ally perceived to be one who had sympathy as well as justice, 
and who not only punished sin and rewarded virtue, but who 
helped struggling virtue to its victory. Out of the life of the 
Hebrew nation there emerged prophets who were themselves 
the spiritual teachers of a spiritual people ; and they from 
time to time gave forth that truth which God had wrought 
into their experience, and as they were able to receive it. Out 
of all their deliverances — many more than have been pre- 
served — there survived that which was fittest to survive. Xo 
one Divine Council, no one ordained potentate or priest se- 
lected, but the ages took these utterances of eighteen centuries 
and shook them in the sieve of time, and all that was light was 
floated off by the water, and all that was worthy to remain 
was retained. This is, briefly put, the history of the Bible. 
It is a collection of the most spiritual utterances of the most 
spiritual race of past time. You are to come to it as such a 
collection. It is as such that you are to study and take ad- 
vantage of it, — as such a record of spiritual experiences. — 
Signs of Promise : Sermons Preached in Plymouth Pulpit, 
by Lyman Abbott, D.D., p. 262. 



THE QUESTION OF CANONICITY. 147 

accepting the canonicity thereof. In itself 
it is a very interesting question whether the 
prophets in rapt vision really saw the full 
purport of the things they unmistakably dis- 
closed. We give our own judgment — let it 
pass for what it is worth — that law-givers, 
prophets, and apostles, that Isaiah, or the 
two Isaiahs, Micah, and even Paul, uttered 
truths in regard to which, had they been 
critically questioned, they might have been 
lost in attempts to answer ! It may be that 
the Messiah of the prophets is simply Israel 
in captivity, yet as we read the fifty-third 
chapter of Isaiah, it seems as if the Nazarene 
must, in the prophet's eye, have sat for the 
portrait. The question thus involved, though 
one of deep interest, does not in any way 
affect the matter of canonicity. In regard 
thereto let the scholars pursue their high 
vocation, while all others wait for results, — 
wait in readiness to accept. 

4. Modern thought does not permit the 
selecting of any one line of evidence as in 
itself complete, or the equivalent of complete- 
ness. The root, the fibre, the bark, the twig, 



148 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 

the leaf, even the dominant factor, the sap, — 
no one of these is the tree. The bone, the 
muscle, the tendon, the nerve, even the prin- 
cipal factor, the blood, — no one of these 
makes the physical man. The plank, the 
rib, the cordage, the sail, — no one of these 
makes the ship. In the Bible, as in the 
tree, the animal, the ship, the unit is the 
combination of many parts. The external 
proofs and the internal proofs, with a vast 
body of subdivisions, are compacted together, 
one part supplying what another lacks. The 
Bible, haying in Christ its full outcome, in- 
terpretation, and power, is a body of various 
parts, — a body "fitly joined together, and 
compacted by that which every joint sup- 
plied." Not even the chief factor — that of 
the witness within, the certitude which comes 
of the soul's spiritual verification (as related 
to which all historic particulars have subordi- 
nate and secondary places and values) — is in 
itself complete or sufficient. Bach part must 
be in its proper place, but all must work to- 
gether ; the full testimony is the concrete 
witm 



CHAPTER XVI. 

THE BIBLE AND MANKIND. 

A MONO the things which it might be pre- 
^** sumed would " go without the saying " 
is a proposition to the effect that the Bible, 
if it would have a durable place among men, 
must have its foundation in the welcome of 
mankind, — its welcome not simply, as already 
explained, in the reasoning faculties, but 
also and not less in the sympathies and affec- 
tions of men. No beliefs or commands can be 
superimposed upon humanity, nor forced 
thereupon by external fiat; the relation be- 
tween the two must be analogous to the branch 
and the vine. Yet this statement, which in 
general terms seems obvious on the bare utter- 
ance, is really the chief trophy of modern 
thought. For long ages the last thing 
which theologians thought of consulting was 
humanity. This had no more voice in the 



150 THE BIBLE AXD MODERN THOUGHT. 

matter of such supreme importance to its 
condition, than has the humblest private in an 
army in the planning of the battle in which 
he is to risk life and limb. Even within the 
years of a generation, Dr. Mansel, in his 
" Limits of Religious Thought " soberly ar- 
gued what we may call the equivalent of the 
proposition that the Bible can have no 
respect for the constitutional proclivities of 
human nature; it conies thereto in the 
character of autocrat, and not of supplicant. 
The thought which has got control, almost 
within the years of a decade, now makes it 
needless that we argue the exact contrary 
proposition ; there does, however, seem occa- 
sion to elucidate and illustrate. 

There is a strong analog)' between two 
things which in their natures are widely dis- 
similar, — the body and the soul. Certain 
facts in regard to the physical suggest cer- 
tain facts in regard to the spiritual. Making 
no attempt at fulness of statement, nor at 
anything more than a superficial accuracy, 
it may help in this elucidation if we specify 
a few things in regard to the physical body. 



THE BIBLE AND MANKIND. 151 

If we could suppose the body to have its 
Bible, — a book or collection of books pur- 
porting to give the things needful for bodily 
welfare, that book would very likely instruct 
the body in at least these four regards : — 

1. The structure of the human frame 
would be explained ; at least there would be 
no maxim, no rule of conduct, that in any 
essential would do violence to any part of 
the structure. Muscle and bone, tendon and 
nerve, joint and socket, each and all would 
be respected, and in so far as the manual 
gave rules of conduct it would provide for 
the normal use of the body in all its parts, 
and would urge nothing in despite of them. 
That is to say, this physical Bible would be 
rigidly anatomical. 

2. Yet again, the human frame is more 
than a frame ; it has certain vital functions. 
It not only is ; in life it acts. And it acts in 
definite ways. The blood goes from the 
heart by one avenue ; it returns by another. 
Certain nerves move ; other nerves feel. 
The cell which is the unit of the body grows 
and decays, waste and supply being the law. 



152 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 

The particulars are familiar to all persons of 
average information. Technically they are 
called functional. They make physiology, as 
supplementing, yet distinct from, anatomy ; 
and in regard thereto a true physical Bible 
would make no attempt to alter, to suppress, 
to violate, certainly not to make ; it would 
simply find what &,whai existed with the first 
man, and explain. Its rules would aim to 
assist and guide in the natural unfolding, — 
ill an unfolding rigidly natural. 

3. But the physical frame in its structure 
and in its vital operation-, is mot sufficient unto 
itself. It constantly depends on food. This 
it cannot evolve, it must be taken from 
without The eye does not create its own 
light i the light is not a constituent of the 
structure. The thirst docs not find the foun- 
tain within itself. The fruits of the field and 
waters from the fountain are external to the 
structure, — external to the function. The 
structure and the function may elect what 
they will have, hut they cannot make what 
they will have. They may refuse this, that, 
and the other, but what they at last take 



THE BIBLE AND MANKIND. 153 

must come to them and exist independently of 
them. 

4. The body, in the present stage of its 
development as in the past, — whatever may 
be the status in some remote future, — is 
subject to infirmities, to ailments, to injuries; 
and hence there has been developed the 
healing art ; pathology is the technical name, 
and the physician is the expert. It is the 
fact, within strict limits, that the body has 
recuperative vigor; but it often needs help 
from without. The ailment may be in the 
bone, or nerve, or muscle ; but the specific 
that aids is not in the body ; it is an outside 
agency. Hence, in addition to wisdom touch- 
ing the structure, function, and nutrition, 
there will be medicine. 

Now if we take these identical technical- 
ities, and give to them spiritual meanings, we 
have an intelligible analysis of the Bible as the 
soul's instructor, nourisher, and healer; and 
the analysis takes in the whole Bible. There 
is a soul anatomy in certain faculties. There 
is a soul physiology, as in certain loves, 
sympathies, hopes, trusts, joys, ethical im- 



154 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 

pulses. There is a soul hunger, for which 
the meat, the bread, the water of life are 
supplies. There are certain soul ailments, — 
especially there is sin, for which there is 
a balm in Gilead, and the Physician who, 
as such, comes not to the whole, but only 
to the sick; salvation is exclusively for the 
sinful. 

We select one comprehensive illustration 
from the physical body ; yet we easily make 
the analysis and the application to the soul 
in Bible terms. The eating that which is 
good, the drinking from living fountains, the 

bread that comes down from heaven, 

prophet, evangelist, and apostle seem to 
revel in these great and pertinent analogies. 
We have been forced to confess that modern 
thought has but recently contributed to 
theological literature, and as its noblest tro- 
phy, the fact that the Bible relates to man- 
kind, and mankind to the Bible. Yet no 
exponent of the instructive thought has 
done the work in terms clearer, more cogent, 
more comprehensive, than have the Biblical 
writers. 



THE BIBLE AND MANKIND. 155 

But up to this point our statement is quite 
fractional. To leave it here would be to leave 
the great theme in confusion. We have to 
round out the proposition : Man relates to, 
respects, recognizes, but never by any sort 
of fiat violates human nature. The question 
immediately arises, Who is human nature ? 
Is it the first person you meet upon the 
street ? Is it anybody in particular ? Is it 
the sinful wretch to whom your first faithful 
word is one of restraint, of opposition, of at 
least the semblance of violence ? 

All will agree with us when we repeat that 
the supposed physical Bible takes anatomy as 
it is ; but this does not mean the anatomy of 
the deformed, of the stunted, of the perverted. 
So in reference to the functions and the foods. 
It simply analyzes the ideal body ; but in 
dealing with particular persons, it — within 
certain limits — shortens, lengthens, crooks, 
straightens, with the view of bringing the in- 
dividual as near as possible to the ideal stand- 
ard. And similar statements apply to the 
same treatise in relation to structures and 
functions, hungers and thirsts. 



156 THE HIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 

We do not find the ideal body ; we have 
to imagine one. But,— and if it has the accent 
of cant it need not have when we ejaculate, 
"Thank the Lord! " — we do have the ideal 
soul; we have him "in whom all the build- 
ing fitly framed together, groweth unto an 
holy temple in the Lord/' « till we all come 
in the unity of the faith, and of the knowl- 
edge of the Son of God unto a perfect man, 
unto the measure of the stature of the fulness 
of Christ." 

Whether or not the Bible relates with this 
ideal humanity — relates with //. while chief 
among the agencies in the struggle to bring 
the present crude and incongruous actual up 
to the " measure of fulness " — cannot, from 
the nature of the case, be matter of present 
knowledge. For our belief to this purport 
Ave make no claim other than that it is belief, 
— so strong, however, that we find it the 
equivalent of practical certainty. For long 
ages to come, as in all the ages up to the 
apostolic era, the matter may remain in con- 
troversy. . But we know that in the present 
it does not relate, as in the past it has not 



THE BIBLE AND MANKIND. 157 

related, to humanity in the sense of winning 
a universal allegiance. Nor would it do this 
even though it were confirmed by audible 
voice from heaven. 

The present humanity is far from being 
the possible and ideal. Individuals range all 
the way from the Hottentot to the classic 
Greek ; from the cold-blooded, matter-of-fact 
delver in details to the imaginative Hindoo ; 
from the estate in which belief is credulous 
and instinctive, needing curb and check, to 
that in which unbelief is obstinate and exact- 
ing to the last particular ; from the moral im- 
becile of the slums of the city to apostolic 
saintliness. Then diversities of race, as 
marked in mental as in physical characteris- 
tics, are seen to be tenacious beyond esti- 
mate ; while to the single individual there 
are great diversities pertaining to age, expe- 
rience, moods, and environments. 

Every one of the peculiarities in this enu- 
meration is a factor in the determining of 
religious faith. Hence, there are for the 
time — it may be for a long period. there will 
be — natural atheists, natural deists, natural 



158 THE BIBLE AND MODERN" THOUGHT. 

rationalists, natural believers in the spirit 
with distrust of the letter, natural believers 
in the letter, — to the very extreme of verbal 
inspiration, without the omission of jot or 
tittle or even King James's punctuation 
points. All these, left to the trend of their 
several mentalities, uninfluenced by heredi- 
tary attachments and social affiliations, would 
drop, with unfailing precision, into accordant 
and mutually co-operative sectarian relations, 
so that sects would at least be spared the 
vexation of finding room for even two to 
walk together while native impulsions are 
striving to keep them apart. 

If the Bible is the kind of book which we 
have attempted to show that it is, there will 
be, in the fulness of time — when the indi- 
viduals have reached the ideal unfolding as 

strict an accord between it and humanity as 
there is between the healthy eye and the 
light of the sun. In regard to this perfect 
outcome we — repeating in apostolic phrase 
what we have somewhat elaborated in other 
connections — " walk by faith and not by 
sight." And we rejoice in this faith wherein 



THE BIBLE AND MANKIND. 159 

we stand. We seldom tremble lest the moun- 
tains fall, — yet at times they fall. We have 
less anxiety in regard to the book which, as 
we read it, flowers and fruits in the Ideal 
Man, — Jesus the Christ. 



INDEX. 



Page 
Abbot, Ezra, on date of John's Gospel 46 

Abbott, Lyman, quoted . 146 

Alexandrian Manuscript 108 

Analogy, Butler's, comments upon 41 

Analogies between body and soul 150-153 

Authorities, dependence upon 18 

Authors specially consulted 114, 115 

Bible, early impressions as to its origin 95 

estimation of, changed by psychology and erudition 74 

evidences of, varied and correlated 147 

in what particulars affected by modern thought . 75 

must submit to the tests of reason 24 

often injured by its champions 27, 66, 67 

relative values of different parts 75, 76 

writers of, often revealed more than they knew . 147 
Bissell, E. C, his bibliography of Pentateuch literature 17 
Briggs, C. A., quoted 37 

Calvin, used his reason to decry reason 71 

Canon, the, recognized rather than made by councils . 143 

Canonicity, question of, what it considers . . . 139, 140 

principle of analogous to Natural Selection . 143, 144 

Certitude of the Bible distinctive 131 

11 



162 



INDEX. 



Channing, Dr., sermon of, at Baltimore 63 

Cheyne, Professor, views of, respecting the Hexateuch 58, 59 

Christ and Christianity identical 136 

Christianity, as an historic method .... 122 

Clarke. J. F., opinion of John's Gospel ..... 46 
Clergy, of a former generation, how they misled their 

people as to the Scriptures 96 

Coincidences of thought 10 

Copyists before the art of printing 93 

Currents vs. eddies of thought . n 

Crosby, Howard, extreme conservatism of 46 

characterization of German scholars 46 

Darwin, Charles, exceptional candor of .... 20 

Elliott, Professor, quoted . 39 

Epistles, the undisputed 142 

Factors in determining beliefs ....... 157 

Faith, dependence on, in secular matters ..... 18 

Fugitive Slave Law as an illustration ...... 31 

Haley, Rev. J. W., quoted 101 

Herodotus and Plato, manuscripts of, compared with 

those of the New Testament ....... 102 

Hesitation in accepting new views natural and justifiable 61 

Higher Criticism, distinguished from Rationalism . . 23 

copiousness of recent literature of 17 

many specialties of 17 

principles of, applied to all literatures 18 

verified results of, to be acknowledged .... 22 

illustrated 30,31,32 



INDEX. 163 

Higher Criticism, PAGE 

modifications effected by, affect the letter rather 

than the spirit 51, 52 

its work same in kind as that of the Revisers . 55, 56 
results of, to be awaited with patience .... 57 

Historic certainties not absolute 135 

Humanity, its actual estate far below its possible . . 157 

Impression, early, in regard to the origin of the Bible . 94 

Infallibility, term loosely used 122 

how applied by Westminster divines 123 

how restricted by Dr. Hodge 125 

needed by man's mental structure 127 

in what sense applicable to the Bible 137 

Japanese, not expected to accept the Bible on mere 

verbal affirmation of its truth 91 

John's Gospel, doubts as to date and authorship . . 39 

Knowledge of God not absolute 133 

Lagrange, quoted 19 

Manuscripts of Scripture compared with those of classic 

literature 53, 54 

diverse readings of 100 

mutually corrective 117 

Mental estates share the limitation of the mental structure 84 
Modern thought, its authority not in its modernness 7, 8 

a current, not an eddy 11 

as related to the Bible not constructive .... 14 

Old Testament, Hebrew revision of 106 



164 



IXDEX. 



Page 

Pentateuch, extreme modifications of 37, 38 

Prof. C. A. Briggs' view of 37 

Polycarp, his frequent mention of New Testament books 120 

Prepossession, unconscious influence of 20 

Probability often practically equivalent to certainty . 133 
Psalms, David's authorship denied 38 

Quotations from Xew Testament by the Fathers . 118-120 

Rationalism defined 25 

Reason as related to the Bible 62 

great change in respect to authority of ... 63, 64 

assisted not displaced by the Bible ..... 65 

final authority in all beliefs . 68 

is not only bowed to, it also bows 88 

often bows to testimony 90 

Reformation, the, illogically held much of the Roman- 
ism it nominally discarded 80 

Revelation distinguished from its record 121 

Romanism, its notion of Biblical infallibility . . 78, 79 

its boast over Protestantism in respect to the Bible 77 

its theory put into syllogism 78 

its notion of infallibility predicated of fallible prem- 
ises > 82 

Science of history, how matured 109 

Scrivener quoted by Haley 103, 104 

Shakspeare, various readings of 105 

Sinaitic Manuscript 108 

Smyth, J. Paterson, quoted 106 

Stowe, C. E., quoted 101 

Stuckenberg, J. H. W., quoted 53 

Syriac Version very near apostolic a^e ... 116 



INDEX. 165 

Theologians, the older, paid no heed to human nature 

as authoritative 149, 150 

Tischendorf, his discovery near Mount Sinai .... 107 

Three witnesses 120 

Truth not its own authority in every sense .... 88 
Tulloch, Principal, quoted 9 

Vatican Manuscript . . . . . 107 

Versions of very early manuscripts 116, 117 

Voltaire made an infidel, not by the Bible, but by Rom- 
ish notions of it 67 

Vulgate, Jerome's, antiquity of 117 

Words primarily meant for physical uses 132 

Wright, G. Frederick, quoted 123, 124, 125 



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